


M Marks the Spot

by all15ofthem



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: AU, Action, Additional Tags to Be Added, Also death cause... they're assassins and all, Alternate Universe, Angst, Assassins, Blood gore and violence cause they kill people, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Humour, M/M, Multi, Multi Chapter, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-28
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-03-10 05:17:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 63,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13495706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/all15ofthem/pseuds/all15ofthem
Summary: In a boy-sees-boy-from-across-the-room world, having a double life tends to get in the way of true love.- - - - -Mikhailo's train of thought faltered and his brain stopped functioning when the man carefully tucked a loose-hanging strand of his hair behind his ear, brown eyes trained on blue ones to gauge their reaction as he did. The man smirked and stroked Mikhailo’s neck with his thumb as he leaned closer, holding his head in place as he pressed their lips together again, tenderly, slow enough that Mikhailo’s eyes fluttered shut against his will. Mikhailo had almost melted into the kiss when he felt cold metal slicing through a layer of his abdominal skin, and his eyes flew open. For a split second, he froze, unable to look away from the man's cold brown eyes, betrayal and shame making his body flash hot and cold at the same time. The feeling of blood dripping from his fingers shocked him into action.





	1. Marks over Matters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Regardless of the 5-day stakeout and her tits freezing off on the rooftop of some hotel, Mandy was exceptionally happy that the mission was coming to an end. Their mark was young, rich, and becoming increasingly more restless, and like many young, rich and entitled boys, he was proving to be a dick, but more importantly, to primarily think with his dick. And that made him stupid: stupid enough to make mistakes. The time had come, and Mandy smiled as Mickey’s voice in her ear happily sighed at the distinct sound of a rifle loading, waiting for that split second when the right moment and the perfect angle coincided.

It had been a short and chilly summer, and the brisk September wind blowing around the rooftop of the 35-floor hotel went straight through her nylon wingsuit as she patiently waited. Freezing her ass off on a rooftop for 18 minutes wasn’t her favorite Friday night pastime, but being the lighter one of the two of them had decided her fate for her. Secondly, their mission was on its last legs and they couldn’t afford to fail after all the little things that had been going inexplicably wrong over the past 2 months, which had amounted to 2 aborted and 1 failed mission; more failure than they had experienced cumulatively over the last 6 years of their practice. They needed a win, if only to mellow out Mickey’s progressively worsening agitation at life in general so she wouldn’t have to strangle him in his sleep within the next week or so. They _just_ needed to execute one mission flawlessly, or at the very least without any outside interference, to get rid of that strange feeling of someone watching them, because it was practically impossible for anyone to know who they were or what they were doing, let alone influence their missions to the point of failure. Unfortunately, their current mission had gone anything but flawlessly, which was why Mickey was positioned 15 floors below her with multiple sniper rifles aimed at the bedroom window she was also staring at, calmly waiting for the frantic fucking to subside while she was shivering her ass off on a rooftop instead of being at home, comfortably lounging on her couch with a drink in her hand.

The original mission had been pretty clear-cut. Their mark, Travis Antonio Sánchez, was the 25-year-old son of a minor Colombian drug lord. Because of an ongoing gang war that his father had escalated a week prior by murdering the entire extended family of his rival’s wife, Travis was being securely held in his gorgeous penthouse with a bulletproof glass-walled bedroom that overlooked Manhattan from the 20th floor, for his own safety. For 5 long days, they had been staking out his penthouse from the hotel across the street, and for 5 long days, they had been hoping that he would eventually leave the apartment or be moved to a more secure location so they could make a move during the transfer. Unfortunately, his very capable security team kept him in the apartment, in a fully secured building, with random spot checks on all floors including the roof, and a rotating guard that couldn’t be bribed or blackmailed within their limited time frame.

Though the client hadn’t specifically requested it, their common practice was to keep their kills on the downlow, to not use too many uncommon weaponry or artillery that generally belonged in a battle zone and not a 20th floor penthouse. Furthermore, they had 2 weeks to complete the contract, so instead of sniping the man through his bulletproof windows with extremely expensive high caliber bullets, they waited, and they watched.

Then, completely unexpectedly, their agent had been informed to push forward their deadline to the point that the contract was to be fulfilled that night or not at all. The change in deadline wouldn’t have been such a problem if they had then been allowed to go big and explosive, or to just shoot him through the bulletproof glass wall of his bedroom with a few of those ridiculously expensive high caliber bullets, but no, the hit was now _also_ supposed to look like an accident. Both conditions increased their price dramatically as a consequence, but that didn’t appear to be an issue for the client. Whatever had spooked him had spooked him enough not to care about money, and Mickey was aching to pay someone a visit to figure out what was going on behind the scenes.

Though the added conditions were easily within their combined skill sets, a heads-up would have made the whole mission a lot easier and a lot less improvisatory, and Mickey would have been a lot more pleasant to be in the same room with. They prepared what they could with the time they had and the tools at their disposal. Now, all they needed was for someone to make a mistake so they could make their move, for one small window of opportunity that they could latch onto and complete their mission. If Mandy was completely honest with herself, which she really didn’t want to be, they needed to get _really_ lucky to pull this one off cleanly.

Regardless of the 5-day stakeout and her tits freezing off on the rooftop of some hotel, Mandy was exceptionally happy that the mission was coming to an end, successful or not. The combination of Mickey’s progressively bad moods and their annoying, manipulative and all-around entitled piece-of-shit mark was starting to grate on her nerves to the point that her index finger was feeling very trigger-happy. Travis was young, rich, and becoming increasingly more restless, not accustomed to having his freedom of movement impaired to such an extreme extent. With the combination of a modified parabolic microphone and low-power infrared laser beam, Mickey had picked up enough sound waves through the glass wall of the bedroom to piece together most of the conversations that Travis had throughout the 5 days, including all of the bitching, pleading, whining, and threatening to anyone who would pick up his calls such as his mother, two of his girlfriends and one particularly desperate and obvious male friend of his. Like many young, rich and entitled boys, Travis was proving to be a dick, but more importantly, to primarily think _with_ his dick. And that made him stupid: stupid enough to make mistakes.

That Friday night, the security team finally caved to Travis’ demands after he threatened to call his father and have them all fired, or pull out a gun and shoot himself. Mickey had happily commented that Travis was _this_ close to doing their job for them, but regrettably, the security team didn’t let it get that far. An escort was summoned and arrived not much later, and after the security team verified the girl and thoroughly checked her meager belongings, she was allowed into the spacious glass-walled bedroom, curtains left wide-open so the world could bear witness to the grandeur that Travis considered himself to be. One security guard tried to argue that a guard should remain in the room but Travis threw an honest-to-God tantrum and bodily pushed him out of his bedroom, locking the door and shouting express instructions not to dare open it for another 12 hours. He then immediately disabled his own security cameras, and a loud banging on the door indicated that it had been noticed, but Travis yelled back for them not to _fucking_ open that door until he said they could, and to leave him the _fuck_ alone already before he went completely nuts. Once he was satisfied that the security team wasn’t going to break down his door, the music came on, a multitude of drugs came out, and the party got started.

With the locking of his bedroom door and the express instructions for the security team not to enter, Mandy and Mickey saw their chances of a mistake happening multiply. They quickly discussed their options, and the third backup plan was put into action. Clothes were changed, different rifles placed and aimed, darts, needles and guns prepared. Their contingency plan was still in place, and Mandy used the emergency stairs to climb up to the rooftop of the building while Mickey narrated through their intercom what was going on in the bedroom. Even for a drug lord's son, Mickey seemed impressed by the amount of cocaine Travis could fit into his nostrils, and up the poor escort’s, though she seemed to be keeping up pretty well considering her petite frame. Once the cocaine had kicked in, the escort performed an accelerated version of a striptease, of which Mandy received a very dry description through Mickey’s eyes. Once all of her 5 skimpy pieces of clothing were discarded, a short blowjob led to some very frenzied and very predictable fucking, to which Mickey made Mandy smile through the chill in her bones with his snide comments about churning butter. Apparently the music cut off abruptly when Travis slammed the girl onto the table with the ipod docket, and Mickey lamented that he now had to actually listen to Travis’ ridiculous grunting and the girl’s fake moans. Despite his banter, she knew he was waiting, calculating the angles and the distance in case they had to switch plans, mentally cataloging what material he had on hand and what he needed to get the job done. All they needed was one mistake, and it could all be over in a matter of seconds.

As was to be expected, the sex didn’t last long, which Mandy was very thankful for. From the rooftop, she could see diagonally into the bedroom, but she couldn’t hear anything other than Mickey’s voice in her ear. Mickey narrated how promises of better days were being made, how this obviously had ‘never happened to him before’, and how Travis nervously walked to the bathroom and out of view. The escort then appeared on the balcony, which faced the back of the hotel, a hand clutching the thin kimono she had wrapped herself in but barely covered her naked body or protected her from the sharp wind. Under the guise of smoking a cigarette, she called her agency to check in and confirm that everything was going alright, alternating between taking a drag from her cigarette, talking into the phone and trying to keep the kimono closed. After her multitasking and 30-second conversation, she threw down her phone on the little table in the corner of the balcony before taking a long, seemingly calming drag of her cigarette. The time had come, and Mandy smiled as the voice in her ear happily sighed at the distinct sound of a rifle loading, waiting for that split second when the right moment and the perfect angle coincided.

Adrenaline kicked in as Mandy saw their chances of success skyrocket, their backup plan fitting perfectly into the mistakes made by their target. The escort shivered a little as she rolled her shoulders back and bounced on her feet before she predictably took a few seconds to absorb the gorgeous panoramic view that the balcony provided. The moment and angle collided. Mandy heard her brother exhale slowly, and in response, she stepped onto the edge of the rooftop. Mickey waited for the girl to face away from him before he pulled the trigger, his dart hitting her precisely in the side of the neck, and the girl instantly and soundlessly crumbled in on herself like a doll whose strings had been cut. Seeing the girl collapse, Mandy let out a sharp exhale and a silent prayer and jumped, immediately spreading the wings of her wingsuit so she wouldn’t lose too much altitude, angling her body so she would gain just enough speed to cross the distance between the buildings but not too much to splatter herself against Travis’ glass walls like a fly. She reduced her speed and avoided hitting the banister or tripping over the girl still lying unconscious on the balcony during her landing, grabbing onto the banister at the last moment to halt her forward momentum.

Crouching down, Mandy slid open the balcony door a tiny bit to listen for any sounds coming from the bedroom, quickly unzipping her hands out of the suit and flicking the girl’s cigarette off the balcony with a gloved finger. After unzipping her inner pockets, she gently pulled the tranquilizer dart out of the girl’s neck, carefully shoved it into a pocket and took out her own gun, switching off the safety. In the meantime, Mickey quietly swore up and down about the utter uselessness of their thermographic camera because the distance between the buildings and the ridiculous amount of heating going on in the apartment were completely throwing off his readings, but the microphone could hear a whole lot of pep-talking and running water sounds coming from the bathroom area, as could Mandy from her position at the door. She heavily suppressed an eyeroll at her brother’s ranting, quietly slid the balcony door open the rest of the way and waited for another moment before she straightened up and stepped inside.

Her padded feet barely made any sound as she stealthily walked through the bedroom, steering clear of the coffee table holding a round mirror with 4 neatly cut lines of cocaine ready to go until she noticed the beautifully carved wooden box, its top flipped open and containing all the equipment and ingredients for a good few heroin shots inside. She carefully fished a clean needle and a thick, blue elastic out of the box as the sound of running water turned off, and quickly positioned herself so Travis wouldn’t be able to see her right away if he looked around. The man in question walked out of the bathroom a few moments later; naked, his penis bobbing at half-mast as if it hadn’t decided whether to obey the body or the mind, looking down at his phone in his left hand as he scratched his balls with his right, loudly complaining about some stupid security breach that he was going to ignore for another round or two before he looked up to find Mandy’s gun pointing at him. Before he could react, the gun went off in near silence and a dart embedded itself into the crook of his right elbow.

Travis’ eyes went wide in shock and his mouth fell open, but no sound came out. His gaze slowly moved from Mandy to the dart in his arm and back up, and she saw his pupils dilate as the drugs in the dart started affecting his system. It was Mickey’s usual concoction, and her brother was as meticulous as he was skilled, the chemicals triggering a reaction almost identical to a heroin overdose yet never showing up on a blood test as anything other than that, especially not with the cocaine already present in Travis’ system to mess up the results. Travis dropped his phone when an involuntary shiver ran through his body and Mandy’s lips twitched, but she suppressed her smile at the accelerated pace Travis’ body was reacting to the combination of drugs. She placed the dart gun back into her suit to free up her hands as she slowly walked closer. In her ear, Mickey noted that the thermographic camera was picking up a lot of heat coming closer to her location, though he wasn’t sure how many men that heat spot represented, but Mandy didn’t respond, trusting Mickey to do his job and warn her if necessary as she finished hers.

Travis’ eyes were glazing over as she calmly approached him, and he swayed a little on his feet, staring into the distance. Another shiver overtook his body and he moaned, though Mandy didn’t know whether it was in pain or pleasure, nor did she care. She waited patiently for her cue as she had countless other times, as she had been taught to do for more than two decades; not interfering with the process but trusting the drugs to do what they were designed to do even as she listened for any possible outside interference while backup plans and exit strategies were running through the back of her head. Travis took a deep breath, which would be his last deep breath, and a few seconds later, his eyes rolled back into his head as his body completely relaxed and gravity pulled his dying weight down to earth.

Mandy easily caught his body before it hit the floor, and she carried the naked and rapidly overdosing man to the nearest couch, deliberately placing his right arm on the couch’s armrest. The dart she used was significantly bigger than the one Mickey had shot the girl with, and she carefully pulled it out of Travis’ arm so as not to make a bigger puncture wound than necessary, shoving the dart into her inner right pocket. Travis’ eye twitched and his right arm moved a little as if he was fighting the drugs, trying to cling onto what little life he had left, but Mandy gave him a sideways glare as she placed his arm back into the correct position, taking note of his shallow breathing and giving him up to a minute left, tops. Holding down Travis’ hand with her elbow so he wouldn’t move it again, she expertly tied the thick elastic she had taken from the wooden box on the coffee table around his bicep like a tourniquet. As she uncapped the needle to insert it into the dart’s puncture wound, Mickey’s strained voice suddenly barked at her to ‘abort, _now’._

Without any hesitation, Mandy dropped the unused needle next to Travis’ arm and ran to the balcony door while zipping up the suit over her hands, whispering to Mickey to ‘Sleeping Beauty and go’. Sliding the balcony door closed, she could hear several people shouting as something heavy slammed into the bedroom door like a battering ram. Without looking back to see what was going on, she jumped off the balcony, spreading her suit’s wings and focussing on the open window on the 10th floor of the hotel, the wind immediately making her deaf to all sound but that of her rapidly beating heart and Mickey’s confirmation to her command.

In the corner of her eye, she could see a small projectile pass her by as Mickey made a little puff of adrenaline mist explode right into the unconscious escort's face, forcefully neutralizing the effect of his tranquilizer dart and shocking the girl’s body into overdrive. The dart and adrenaline combination were designed so it would appear that the girl had never been asleep, yet confuse her just enough not to be able to recall the last few moments before she was tranquilized and the first few seconds after she woke up. That was generally just enough time and confusion for them to make a clean getaway, and in this particular case, Mandy assumed that the cocaine on the coffee table and the prejudice against the girl’s job would grant them plenty of time for someone to argue exactly what they had made the job look like -- an accidental drug overdose.

Mandy reduced her speed as she approached the open window, bringing her limbs close to her body right before diving through the open window, and rolling as soon as she hit the floor. The wingsuit was an awesome piece of equipment but landing after gliding short distances was a massive pain in the ass and a real shortcoming in its design. She quickly got up and ran back to the window, hearing the escort scream and yell at someone from the other side of the street as Mandy carefully closed the window, making sure to move slow enough to not attract attention to the movement of a window closing that wasn’t supposed to be open. After securing the window, she slowly slid the curtain back into place while keeping her body out of view. She then hurriedly unzipped her wingsuit as she asked Mickey for his status, knowing full well that he was already en-route to their meeting location after dismantling all of his gear and placing it into the designated laundry bags, putting on his suit, wiping down the room and placing the laundry bag in the appropriate trash chute for their retrieval team to pick up afterward. Mickey scoffed into his microphone before confirming he was leaving the room, _‘over and out’_ , and Mandy heard the anticipated click of the mic switching over from a continuous flow to a manual one. He wouldn’t turn the mic back on unless in case of extreme danger or urgency.

She moved quickly to get going; shoving her wingsuit into the laundry bag, pulling out her boring cocktail dress and heels and shimmying into it, fixing her hair, jewelry and make-up, taking out the cleaning wipes and wiping down the window and door, and putting on her conference badge before taking off her gloves, grabbing her purse and laundry bag, dropping off the laundry bag in the trash chute and walking down two flights of stairs before taking the elevator to join Mickey at the NYC Sustainable Investment Conference’s Wine and Cheese Networking Event.

With adrenaline still buzzing through her veins and her badge happily swinging at an annoying chest-height, she flawlessly slipped into her daytime persona, seemingly ignoring the group of police officers rushing towards the elevators she just came from as she confidently walked towards the ballroom on the ground floor where the networking event was being held. Mandy pushed-then-pulled open the door and walked into a noisy room with a friendly smile on her face, casually taking off her badge and shoving it into her purse as she noticed that she was one of the only ones still wearing it. Some overhead elevator-adjacent jazz-like music was playing and Mandy’s second thought involved finding the conference manager and twisting his nuts (or her tits) to get that music changed before it put her to sleep.

The networking event was already in full swing with a great number of people standing around the high tables in the middle of the ballroom, holding drinks in their one hand and business cards in the other while numerous waiters pranced around in their all-black outfits, carrying trays of miniature foods or glasses of red or white wine. A long and crowded bar was set up towards the back of the ballroom and large tables on the edges of the room were spread out with what Mandy assumed was cheese and other cheese-related food items. The target audience of the conference appeared to be salt-and-pepper aged men with groomed beards and tailored suits, and Mandy grimaced as she stood out in the crowd in her cocktail dress and heels and relative youth, having brought down the average age in the room by at least 8%. A quick look around didn’t magically produce Mickey’s location, which didn’t worry her much, but instead showed her a small group of college-age boys and girls huddled together at a table, urging one of their own to go talk to some big-shot looking man at the next table. A little further down, at least 5 tipsy middle-aged men were crowding around a single, fierce-looking and thoroughly pissed off young woman, vehemently arguing about something or the other that brought out the flames in her eyes to the extent that Mandy felt a tiny pull towards her, a primal urge to protect such murderous passion, to help one of her own. She took one more look at the 5 guys hounding the woman to memorize their faces, hoping she’d have time to roofie at least one of their drinks before she and Mickey had to leave. Then she turned the other way, knowing that two young women arguing with a group of drunk men in their current setting would most certainly garner a lot of attention, which was something she couldn’t afford to do.

Her eyes left the woman and the hounding assholes and Mandy continued her search for a small group of people she could disappear into so she wouldn’t stand out like a sore, young, blonde thumb. Several little groups of older men in their sleek suits were drinking and talking like old friends, and though she could easily cut in on their conversation with a broad smile and a smart comment, she didn’t feel like talking about investment all night in order to maintain some semblance of a cover. On her way to the food, she cheerfully greeted a small group of men as if they’d already met, and stopped to say hi to Shannon, a well-coiffed, slightly tipsy older woman who was still wearing her badge, kissing her on both cheeks before complimenting her beautiful dress and promising that they’d catch up later, to which Shannon cheerfully agreed. While still assessing her options, Shannon now being one of them, she accepted a glass of white wine from a _very_ cute waitress who winked at her before turning away, which made Mandy’s smile all the more genuine as she reached the cheese tables stationed on the edge of the ballroom. A group of three older but fit-looking gentlemen in well-tailored, expensive-looking suits looked up at her approach, and one followed her line of sight just as the waitress turned back around to take another casual look at Mandy. Mandy took a sip of her wine to hide her pleased smirk as she could see the waitress’ blush from 12 feet away, caught red-handed by both Mandy herself and the older gentlemen, one of which softly chuckled.

“I hope you’re planning to make an honest woman out of my granddaughter, miss,” he said as way of greeting, and Mandy promptly choked on her wine in surprise, tears springing to her eyes as the alcohol found its way into her lungs. She put down her glass so the liquid wouldn’t splash onto her, and with a knowing smirk, the gentleman patted her on the back with more force than she had anticipated his hand could merit while the other two, who had clearly been eavesdropping, merrily chuckled as Mandy finished hacking up a lung and a half. She was then handed an honest-to-God embroidered handkerchief, and after contemplating what to do with it, she dabbed the tears out of her eyes and hoped that her mascara wouldn’t transfer to the beautiful kangaroos motif. She cleared her throat and grinned up at the three jolly men.

“I was going to say that you didn’t look old enough to have a granddaughter,” she teased, coughing a few times as she turned the handkerchief over in her hand before putting on her worst, fake British accent, “but then you ruined it by turning into a 19th century Mr. Darcy.”

One of the eavesdroppers snickered whereas the other one frowned, giving his companion a sideways look and minutely shaking his head in a silent question at the reference clearly going over his head. Mr. Darcy’s lip twitched, his eyes sparkling as the rest of his face turned serious.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged,” he replied in a flawless BBC English accent, and Mandy’s eyebrows shot up in reference to both the accent and the quote, “that I am _particularly_ fond of the kangaroos on that handkerchief.”

The left-over adrenaline in her body combined with the mild ridiculousness of the situation had her face break out in a 1000-Watt smile she couldn’t hold back.

“Why sir, it is indeed a work of beauty!” Mandy replied, and she grabbed the hem of her dress and performed a dramatically low curtsy, causing Mr. Darcy to chuckle as she held the kangaroo handkerchief out to him with her left hand. He took the handkerchief back, and straightening back up, Mandy held out her right hand for a handshake.

“Amanda Miller,” she offered as he took her hand, shaking it firmly and with confidence, much like the man himself.

“Mark Durand, at your service,” he replied, his British accent gone, and Mandy’s brows lifted high into her hairline at his name, the look of skepticism on her face speaking loud enough that Mark snickered as he let go of her hand.

“It’s an unfortunate coincidence in this particular instance, I acknowledge that, but I could provide you with proof of identification if necessary…”

Mandy was tempted to take him up on his offer, if only to be able to memorize the rest of his personal information so she could figure out how old he really was and look him up later, but she shook her head.

“I trust the word of a nobleman, especially one who appreciates the finer things in life,” she said, and turned towards the tables with food, “like wine and cheese.”

“That’s the only reason _we_ are here,” one of the eavesdroppers piped in, and Mark turned to his companions.

“Amanda, allow me to introduce you to Nicolas Gritz and Vincent Gao, two old friends of mine.”

Mandy smiled and shook each man’s hand, and like Mark, they were measured but firm, as if all three men had taken the same handshaking seminar or were in the same line of business that required a lot of tactical handshaking.

“Pleasure!” she said.

The unmistakable sound of two-way radios and groups of people wearing heavy boots and equipment stomping around the hallway filtered through the thin walls and a lull in the music. For a moment, Mandy’s worst-case scenario popped up in her head and the adrenaline in her body spiked once more, unwillingly causing goosebumps to break out on her arms. Her brain struggled between keeping the conversation going and trying to find Mickey as she took a deep breath and _focussed_ , coming back to the here and now and looking up to find Vincent finishing a question addressed to her.

“-- here?”

“You mean at the cheese table or the conference in general? Because I’m definitely here for the cheese,” she guessed, hoping her response was remotely close to answering his question. Vincent smiled at the smartass remark, and Mandy grabbed her wine from the table to keep her hands busy.

“Well, the table is quite self-evident,” Nicolas chipped in before taking a bite from one of the crackers with cheese he had on a little plate.

“I’m not convinced about the brie and white wine pairing, though,” Mandy continued before taking a sip of her white wine, subtly scanning the room for her brother. A big group of students walked away from the bar section at the end of the ballroom and Mandy found the familiar form of her brother leaning against the far right side of the bar, talking to an older, exquisitely dressed and well-coiffed woman in a gorgeous dark grey pants suit, elegance and wealth practically oozing off of her, and a weight lifted off her shoulders. The woman looked vaguely familiar to her, but she couldn’t remember from where so she didn’t dwell on it, knowing Mickey would inform her of her identity later. The woman laughed at something Mickey said, leaning forward and flirtily putting her hand on his shoulder, and Mandy suppressed a smile at what she knew would be Mickey’s expression; his head slightly tilted, an enticing smirk on his lips, blue eyes sparkling as if he enjoyed the attention. In reality, he was probably already losing his patience with the woman invading his personal bubble and constantly touching him, but he would play his part beautifully until he got home, keeping his temper in check especially right after a job, not calling too much attention to himself.

“I absolutely agree,” Nicolas replied, wiping off the cracker crumbs on his pants, “a nice, full-bodied red would have worked much better. So what do you do, Amanda?”

Mandy restrained herself from snorting at their tag-teaming behaviour after she had avoided Vincent’s initial question and tried to decide whether she would give them her usual spiel or swing something completely different. The swing was always fun as she would most likely never run into these three men ever again, but her brain wasn’t up for making up and _keeping_ up with a whole new backstory at that point in time, so the regular spiel won.

“I own an art gallery up on Elizabeth Street, and I also represent a number of young, up-and-coming artists,” she answered, opening her purse to take out three business cards and passing them around like people would at a networking event. “I pair people interested in a more tangible piece of investment that they can enjoy on a daily basis with the art or artist that fits their fancy.”

Vincent nodded as if something she said made more sense to him now. “So you’re an art broker.”

“Among other things. These conferences are also great for catching up with old clients.”

“Explains why you weren’t at any of the sessions,” Nicolas mumbled absently as he studied the painting printed on the back of her business card.

The nonchalant way Nicolas had noticed her absence at a conference totalling more than 500 people made the hair on Mandy’s neck stand up. One of the reasons she and Mickey had considered the conference a good post-mission rendezvous point and alibi was _because_ of the enormity of it, and the probability that people would not be able to remember the other 499 attendees a week later. It was never a good thing for either of them to be remembered, or for someone to notice their presence, or in this case, their absence. There was the _slight_ chance that Nicolas was a bit of a pervert and had checked out every woman under 40, or that he had a great memory for female faces, but his hyper awareness of the conference attendees rubbed her the wrong way, telling her gut to pay attention.

She nodded as Vincent commented on the benefits of art as an investment and took a long sip of wine to analyze the three men standing in front of her. Now that the previous bout of adrenaline had faded, she was able to think and reason, to connect the tiny dots between the men instead of just respond to her gut feeling and impulses. With a jolt, she realized that they all exuded a sense of suppressed authority, which was probably what had subconsciously attracted her to them in the first place -- she was always attracted to people who exuded confidence, authority, dominance, because it was more fun to face off with them than those who gave in the moment she gave a little push. It felt as if they were forced to downplay their position, their status, standing together on one side so they didn’t have to interact with the regular public more than necessary because it was tiring to pretend to be less commanding than they really were, which could attract the wrong type of attention.

Besides, it was relaxing to be among others who knew what it felt like to be them. They didn’t seem at all interested in networking; none of them had provided her with their profession, their interest in investment, not even their business card, which was standard procedure at conferences such as the one they were at. They weren’t there for the conference at all, which was ironic, because neither was she. They probably weren’t even who they pretended to be, but then again, neither was she.

Alarm bells were starting to ring in the back of Mandy’s head as she recognized too many things of herself in them. The only advantage she had over them was that she was better at embodying her daytime persona, better at hiding the parts of her that could dominate a room just by walking in, and better at fitting in than they were because that's what she did for a living, what she was trained to do for the larger part of her life. It felt like these men had once been trained to pretend, but they had either lost their edge or hadn’t had a reason to use it for long enough for the edge to dull. That generally indicated high-ranking members of well-funded organizations that now managed the people who did the everyday-pretending for them. The wine in her stomach turned acid as she remembered all the tiny things going wrong during the mission they had just completed, the feeling of someone watching her and Mickey, and she hoped the two weren’t in any way related.

Mandy vaguely registered that Mark asked about the artist of the painting on her business card, and she smiled, going on autopilot as she fondly regaled them with the story of the first successful artist she had signed for her gallery; a young, poor French artist by the name of Pierre-Olivier, a man with an amazingly intrinsic understanding of art but a terrible lack of structure in his life, or business sense for that matter, which consequently translated negatively to his work, the work that she was trying to harness and promote. She recounted how they had worked together for years for both their sakes, how he had helped her refine her sense of artistry, a more instinctive feel for artists and art rather than the dry and logical way she had been going about her business while she guided him into taking care of himself and his art so he could stop living off people’s scarce generosity and make it so he could live, travel, develop parts of himself by means other than starvation and lack of sleep. After Pierre went his separate way, searching and finding bigger and better things, they had lost touch for a few years, but one day he came back to gift her a painting he had been working on since the day they met, a masterpiece he felt belonged to her and her alone, a work of gratitude for the time, energy and emotional investments she had put in him. It was that painting that would later form the idea for her to move into a different direction with her gallery and start the new branch of her business.

The men nodded and smiled at the appropriate moments, and Mandy analyzed each movement as if it were a clue that could solve the puzzle in front of her. The witty banter and carefree laughter had felt real, or maybe a little alcohol-fueled, but she now noticed that there was something off in the way they held themselves, something just a tad too stiff with outsiders whereas they instinctively relaxed amongst one another. That type of trust wasn’t just built on friendship, though the three were most definitely old friends. They had most likely experienced more together than regular friends would. They were almost like brothers, men connected through similar, and probably violent, experiences; tragedy, loss, blood, sweat and tears. Experiences such as the army, the navy, law enforcement -- walking through trenches together, following orders, carrying each other’s lives in their hands.

The sound of two-way radios could once more be heard through the thin walls of the ballroom, and it was only because she was paying attention that she noticed Nicolas turning his ear towards the sound just the slightest bit and his eyes unfocusing as he listened; movement that would have meant nothing if it weren’t for the fact that she almost did the same thing to try and hear what was being said on the other side of the crackling radio. Disappointment washed over his face for a millisecond as the trumpets in the jazzy elevator music playing in the room overpowered the sound of the person on the radio, and he turned his attention back to the cheese on the table, all interest in the radio conversation seemingly forgotten.

A chill ran through Mandy’s body as she realized that she was most likely talking to high-ranking law enforcement agents, probably former Captains or of an even higher rank that had gone into management a good number of years ago. It would explain why their agent training was still somewhat present, why her random presence had most likely triggered their gut feeling and they had instinctively tried to establish her identity. There was of course a completely plausible reason for high-ranking agents to be attending an investment conference together; namely that they had a lot of money that they wanted to invest. It was just her luck that she had to find the only agents in a room of 500 people.

She took a breath, not too deep, keeping her heart rate calm and steady, her voice firm and confident, her story as truthful as could be in case anyone of them thought to look her up later. She now vehemently regretted not taking Mark up on his offer to check his ID so she could do the same. She had to get away from her three jolly gentlemen with the kangaroo handkerchief and a tiny and careless drop of her DNA but she would need to do so subtly while keeping her cover ironclad and squeaky clean in case they looked her up now that they had most of her public information in the palm of their hands.

The conversation had steered to modern art, or for Vincent, the lack of understanding of the meaning of modern art, of a single red square on a canvas, though he liked Salvador Dali if only for the crazy visuals he was able to conjure. Mandy gently chuckled, recognizing a test when she saw one, and briefly explained the difference between modern art, abstract art, geometric abstraction and surrealism. As an example, she went on to analyze the painting on her business card, pointing out the mix of geometric abstraction and cubism that Pierre had used to signify her way with numbers and her business instinct. Vincent argued that the cubism itself was an abstraction, and Mandy agreed, but rectified that not all abstractions were cubism.

In the course of her argument with Vincent, she could see Mark relax, his smile softer than before, as if he had finally convinced himself that she was who she said she was, that she hadn’t beelined towards them because she was a threat or wanted something from them. That made the moment opportune, now or never; she had to leave now that they trusted her or keep talking to them the entire night until they were sick of her, which wasn’t a scenario she could afford to be in either. Finishing the last drops of her glass of wine, Mandy waited for a slight lull in the conversation to make her move and politely dismiss herself.

“Gentlemen, it was a true pleasure getting to know you, but duty calls,” she said, mentally slapping herself for using that turn of phrase the moment it exited her mouth as Nicolas’ eye twitched. “I must find at least one of my elusive clients before midnight when he turns back into a pumpkin.”

“Let us know if you need help finding him,” Vincent sweetly offered, and Mandy was glad her poker face didn’t flinch as she laughed, waving her hand at Vincent in polite dismissal of his offer even though she knew he probably had the power to do just as he had offered.

“You are too sweet, Vincent, thank you,” she smiled at him, “I shall remember to call upon my knights in shining suits in case my task proves to be too much for me.”

“Ah, I don’t believe _any_ such task is too much for you,” Mark commented with a raised eyebrow as his brown eyes drilled into her soul, and for a split second, Mandy felt like he could see right through her, could see all the hardship, the brutal training, the absent childhood, the loss and fear and _aching_ that had shaped her as a young child, all the things she had done in her life to survive, and then to learn, and later to thrive. All her deepest fears, for her brother, for herself, for the future, for all the unknown aspects in life.

And then he blinked, and smiled, and the moment passed. It took all of Mandy’s training not to turn on her heel and flee. Instead, she raised her empty glass and inclined her head at them, facing them one at a time with a smile, and then stepped back as they collectively said their goodbyes to her. With a warm smile plastered on her face, she turned her back to them and slowly started walking to the bar to find Mickey. Her brain was filing away everything that had been said, every name and detail the men had mentioned so she could write it down later and start a file on them, just in case.

The ballroom door opened and closed, and the smell of cigar smoke made her check the door to find two older men and a young one stepping into the room together, all chummy smiles and inside jokes. With her brain still on high-alert, she quickly dismissed the two older men as harmless, but the young man had something about him, something predatory that could be her instant attraction to him or her vigilant state of mind projecting itself onto others. She slowed her pace, walking up to Shannon again so she had someone to talk to as she kept an eye on the young man. The two older men walked away together but the young one had stopped a few paces from the door, scanning the room for something, someone, and in her mind’s eye he looked like a tiger hunting for its prey. She quickly checked the bar area to find Mickey standing in the exact same location she had left him, still talking to the older lady, still pissed off and out of patience though the lady would never know, still waiting for Mandy to give him the all-clear so he could leave. Then she turned back to the young man and realized he had found his prey. He was intently staring at the bar area. More specifically, the far right side of the bar area. At the woman. At Mickey.

As if he had been poked with a needle, the man jolted forward, moving purposefully, his attention focussed on one point only, and before making a conscious decision, Mandy moved as well, rudely leaving Sharon mid-sentence and confused in her inebriated state. They were walking parallel to each other, the man and her, maybe 3 meters apart, but his long legs ate up the distance that her shorter legs and high-heeled feet couldn’t keep up with, and Mandy started thinking of back-up and back-back-up plans in case she couldn’t quietly handle the situation.

Suddenly, his path was blocked by a group of students passing through the crowds of people, but he plowed through them, avoiding most but pushing past a few who looked back at him with angry looks on their faces until they saw the concentration on his, and decided that a fight was probably not beneficial to their health. Mandy sighed and kept power walking to try and catch up, steadily losing ground to the man’s mile-long legs. She wasn’t sure that he was aiming for Mickey, and she had no idea what his beef was or why he radiated such anger, but her best guess was that he was a young husband jealous at his older, rich wife’s incessant flirting with another young man. Any other day, she would let Mickey deal with the jealous husband-type, as he had already done many times before, but after the disastrous almost-aborted mission they’d just been through, and the shortening fuse on Mickey’s temper that this woman was very busy trying to light, she wasn’t sure if Mickey’d be able to handle the situation with finesse and subtlety and not resort to a fucking fist fight just to get some of his pent-up anger out.

Still walking as quickly as her heels allowed, Mandy bypassed a group of laughing men and slammed her empty glass down on a random table before swiping a full glass of red wine from a waiter passing by as she moved around more tables and talking people to get closer to the trajectory of her mark. The young man was still hyper focussed on Mickey and the older lady, making a beeline for the bar, not noticing anything around him but his target. Mandy once again prayed for a telepathic link with her brother, but Mickey, the everlasting dolt, seemed to be very interested in the content of his cup, clearly having reached the end of his patience with the woman and instead trying to pray to some God or the other for the strength to refrain from leaving her right then and there. Mandy wished instead that she could just throw her glass of wine at Mickey so he would pay attention to the shit about to hit the fan, but that also seemed counterproductive. Instead, she brought the glass to her lips and downed half the glass while continuing her quasi-jog, careful not to spill a drop as she kept walking.

The young man’s stride was momentarily interrupted by a couple greeting him in passing, and he seemed to snap out of his trance, smiling at them as he slowed down just enough to be polite, but not enough to stop him from moving towards the bar. Mandy’s heart rate slowed microscopically as the man’s expression no longer seemed murderous but just _very_ energized, almost like he was on drugs, which didn’t make the overall situation any less volatile but somehow made her feel better. Maybe he wasn’t after Mickey or the woman after all, Mandy wishfully thought as she did another hop-skip to get a few steps ahead of him, maybe he just _really_ needed a drink.

Having gained enough distance on him, Mandy slowed her pace and turned to walk perpendicular to the man’s trajectory, plastering a stupid, tipsy grin on her face as she moved closer to her target. Eight steps separated them, and Mandy softly giggled to herself to get more into character and in case anyone around her was paying attention. Six steps, and she was close enough to see that the predatory look on his face she had originally noticed seemed to have truly faded, though he still looked intent on something, be it woman, man or drink. Four steps, and the man hadn’t looked up or around him, had most likely not noticed her approach. She just hoped that she wouldn’t _actually_ fall and smash open her face on a table; that’d be a tad _too_ dramatic. Two steps, and adrenaline soared through her body as Mandy took a deep breath before she made herself trip.

In her own personal brand of dramatic flair, Mandy let out a soft squeak as she pitched forward right in front of the man’s body, seemingly tripping over her high heels, the remaining red wine in her glass flying just shy of the man’s lower torso and pants so she wouldn’t accidentally spray him straight in the crotch but also not hit anyone else in the vicinity. The man moved on pure instinct, Mandy’s sudden appearance in front of his body halting his forward movement, and he evaded the wine by beautifully sidestepping the liquid soaring through the air, ending up right next to Mandy and catching her arm before she could collide into a nearby table as her second stumble turned out to be real, pulling her up with a little more force than strictly necessary to stand next to him. As they both stood there, looking at the small pool of purple seeping into a tablecloth, it took a moment for him to softly shake his head and seemingly force his hand to loosen the tight grip he still had on Mandy’s arm, stroking the spot once as if he had hurt a puppy and was trying to make amends, then quickly retracting his hand when he realized what he was doing.

Mandy blinked a few times as she decided to ignore his strange behaviour in order to focus on her distraction campaign, lifting the now empty glass to her face before she giggled at the few drops that had clung to her fingers and turned to face the man, her tipsy smile slowly turning into an expression of horror as if she had just realized what she’d almost done.

“Oh my god, sir, oh my-- I’m _so_ sorry,” she lied as she wobbled in a half-circle around the guy to get his back turned to Mickey under the guise of checking his suit for wine spots. “I’m so clumsy, it’s-- hold this, is that a spot?!”

Mandy handed her empty glass to the man, which he took out of reflex as she had anticipated he would after catching her like that, and proceeded to stroke his dress shirt under the guise of looking for spots of wine, noting a surprisingly muscled and tight body underneath the layers of clothing she was touching. Though the small commotion had thankfully not been noisy enough to gather much attention, she could see Mickey looking at her out of the corner of her eye. Stroking the guy’s shirt with one hand, Mandy hand-signalled Mickey with the other to withdraw immediately. Mandy saw Mickey sigh deeply before a seductive smile spread across his face as he turned back to the older woman, softly talking to her as his hand reached out to stroke the side of her face. Whatever he said made her nod quickly into his hand, and Mickey stroked down her arm until he caught her hand in his, bringing it up to his lips to kiss it before guiding the woman towards the exit. Mandy caught him flipping her a very discreet upside-down bird by ways of brushing invisible dust off his pants as he walked towards the door, and she suppressed her smile as she continued playing the dumb, ditzy blonde. Realizing that she wasn’t going to be able to find a spot of wine on the guy’s shirt because he had miraculously evaded every single drop of it, she rubbed a drop of wine still clinging to her finger onto his shirt instead, and immediately proceeded to fall all over herself in apology.

“Oh, I _knew_ it, I am _so_ sorry, please let me dry-clean this,” she rambled, “I knew I shouldn’t have been wearing these shoes.” She took a small step back while still holding on to his suit jacket as if to inspect him from afar. “Where do you work, I’ll have it delivered to your office.”

She took a moment to look up and found the man staring at her with a smile twitching on the side of his mouth, his pupils halfway dilated in a way that could either signify attraction or the drugs she suspected were in his system, though his current demeanor wasn’t supporting that latter theory. He softly grabbed both her hands in his and pulled them from his suit, turning them over and bringing her right hand up so she could see the wine drying there. Mandy didn’t know whether to be horrified that the man had realized that she had rubbed the wine on his shirt herself or impressed at his observation skills, but she continued her ditzy blonde act and let her mouth drop open and her eyes go wide.

“Oh no,” she whispered, aghast, staring from her hand to his shirt and back to her hand as he let go of her.

“It’s okay, don’t worry about the shirt,” he replied as he straightened his jacket, and Mandy was pleasantly surprised at his voice, kind but self-assured, not at all irritated that some woman had rubbed wine on his clothes.

“Please, I am _so_ sorry,” she pleaded, “let me make it up to you. I have a friend who has a dry cleaners about 3 blocks from here so we could literally go there right now and she’d get that cleaned up for you in a jiffy.”

The guy chuckled and Mandy couldn’t help liking his laugh as well, wondering where that predatory look had come from now that she could see the laugh lines in his face.

“Really, I’m fine, this isn’t the first time I’ve had wine spilled on my clothes,” he said, grimacing at whatever memory had popped up in his head.

“Do you often make girls trip as you walk by?” she replied, trying to keep the purr out of her voice but not succeeding completely.

He snorted, and Mandy’s eyebrow rose to the point where he stammered to provide an explanation.

“No, not girls generally, I’m just genetically incapable of opening a bottle of wine the right way,” he clarified, “I’ve since been permanently banned from touching the wine opener at my family’s house.”

Mandy took a quick look at his left hand to find it devoid of rings, and decided his ‘family’ may not yet include a wife, though that wouldn’t have stopped her if she really wanted him.

“I can open your bottles for you,” she blurted out and he tensed up, his shoulders pulling back a little. It was all she could do not to turn around and walk away in irritation at herself after she had promised herself not to jump at the poor guy, so she put on her sweetest smile and flashed the puppiest eyes she could master.

“But for now, how about I just buy you a drink? One drink, as a thank you for not letting me smash my face into a table.”

Thoughts were going through the man’s head and Mandy refrained from biting her lip, hoping that she hadn’t pushed him too far as he turned to take a quick look at the bar over his shoulder. She wondered if he really had been after Mickey or the older woman, considering the lack of a wedding ring, or if she had been completely mistaken in her interpretation of his actions and had practically assaulted an otherwise innocent man. A cute innocent man. A really fucking hot innocent man with a fine-as-fuck sculpted body hidden underneath a tailored suit. He turned back towards her with a smile spreading across his face and Mandy couldn’t help her sigh of relief as he held out his arm to her.

“One drink,” he said as they slowly started walking towards the bar.

“One drink,” she repeated, trying to stop imagining what he would look like without his suit on.

They took a few more steps in silence, sidestepping an older couple and walking around another table.

“You know it’s an open bar though, right,” he commented out of the blue, and Mandy surprised herself by laughing a little too loudly as the adrenaline started to fizzle.

“Yes, I do,” she lied, “but I was hoping you wouldn’t notice that and would just be suitably impressed that the bartender and I had a special arrangement.”

They skirted around a group of older men clearly discussing politics.

“As long as it’s not wine,” he replied as he pulled a face, and Mandy snickered.

“An Old-Fashioned it is then,” she concluded as they almost reached the bar and she made eye contact with the bartender, mouthing ‘Old Fashioned’ in his direction while holding up two fingers, hoping he could both lip-read and craft a proper cocktail.

“How’d you figure that?” he said, properly impressed.

“Well, the red hair stereotypically goes for whiskey, though I’d say your preference is more on the Irish side. The cut of your suit, however, says you want something with just a _little_ more flair,” she grinned.

“More _flair_?!” He gasped, appalled at her analysis, but Mandy could see the corner of his lip twitching, holding one hand to his chest as they reached the bar.

“There’s orange zest in the whiskey,” she exclaimed, trying not to laugh at his fake-shocked expression, “they light that stuff on fire, man, how much more flair were you looking for in a drink?” She checked to see if the bartender had understood her long-distance order placement and found him putting sugar and Angostura into two highball glasses.

“My colleague always says that there’s nothing manly about knocking back straight alcohol if you can modify it into something more drinkable.”

Mandy snorted, her eyes wide and eyebrows high as she dipped her chin so he could clearly see the scorn on her face.

“I will not be associated with those who dare say that a good glass of vodka isn’t drinkable, dear sir.”

“I guess I’ve never had a good glass of vodka then,” he said with too big of a smirk on his face at the outrage on hers.

Mandy took a quick glance at the selection of vodka behind the bar and grimaced.

“And you definitely won’t find that good glass of vodka here either. Maybe one day I’ll find you one.”

The bartender put two glasses filled with ice, whiskey, bitters and sugar in front of them and held up a finger, telling them to wait a moment as he walked away. He returned with a torch and two orange zests and put one down before turning on the torch. He slowly heated up the outside of the zest with a blue flame until Mandy could smell the orange coming from it, then pressed the ends of the zest together, releasing the essential oils and lighting them on fire as he went, creating a tiny spectacle of fire just for the two of them. He then rubbed the orange zest around the rim of the first glass, dropped the zest in it and repeated the trick with the second zest in the next glass. Despite her earlier ridiculing of the drink, Mandy loved it when bartenders could flame a zest the right way, seeing the tiny sparkles of oil light on fire as the tangy smell of orange drifted through the air. Mandy looked up to find the man smiling at the whole process with a similar expression of fondness on his face, and she wondered for how long she could keep him before her life made it impossible again to keep outside people in. Just before the bartender walked away with the torch, she noticed him slipping a 10 dollar bill across the bar with a smile.

She grabbed a glass and lifted it up, waiting for him to do the same.

“To red wine and high heels,” he toasted, and Mandy snorted.

“To finding you a glass of vodka you’ll like drinking straight,” she replied and clinked her glass to his as she looked him in the eyes before taking a sip of her drink. And another sip. Damn, that bartender was good.

 

* * *

 

4 hours, the hotel bar, 6 drinks and a late-night hot dog later, Mandy was sitting in a cab going back to her apartment, regrettably alone but strangely happy, and took out her phone to read the coded message Mickey had sent her 3 hours earlier. She had noticed it then but a quick glance had proven that the message wasn’t urgent, so she had swiped it away to be read at a time without outside people around. Mickey’s message was short and concise: another job had come up, it was purely chemical, didn’t require her expertise, and he was leaving within the hour in case she needed to debrief. The hour available for debriefing was long gone, and Mickey hadn’t called or texted again, so she concluded that he was no longer reachable and nothing urgent or bad had come up in the last 4 hours. She would start her report on the three gentlemen as soon as possible, jotting down a few details tonight to make sure she didn’t forget, would check in with the retrieval team to make sure all their equipment was accounted for and would contact their agent to see if she could figure out why the client had required a last minute shift in deadlines, but that could wait another day. Or two.

She exited the message, checked around her to make sure the taxi driver was still going in the right direction and looked back down at her phone. A smile spread over her face as she opened up her contacts list and flicked down the long list of names of her artists and daytime clients to find its newest addition, butterflies bursting around her stomach as she did. It had been a long time since she had felt that way, since she had thought that maybe, _maybe_ she could find someone funny and intelligent and _outside_ that she could perhaps, possibly, potentially think about as more than a one-time-fuck.

She hadn’t been able to broach the subject of her very tentative ideas of retirement with Mickey yet, hadn’t found that opportune moment or really, _any_ moment of relative peace in the past month or five to approach that very delicate matter with her brother. All the little things going wrong, the general aura of paranoia blanketing their missions and everyday life pulled on both sides of her conscience; getting out of the business before the shit hit the fan, and protecting the business she and her brother had painstakingly built with all her might. She couldn’t just ditch her brother and saddle him with the issues; she knew he didn’t want to retire, he hadn’t even hit his peak yet, was just starting to get recognition for his amazing skills within the community, and leaving him could jeopardize all that, cause it all to crash and burn, and that wasn’t something she was willing to let happen to her other half.

It wasn’t by their design that they had become that way; the brutal beginnings of their lives hadn’t given them many other choices, and survival had made it so that they only depended on one another, only truly trusted one another. Their lives had always been intertwined, their roots incapable of being separated without fear of one of the two plants dying, and neither of them was willing to let the other one die. Mickey had once died for her, and she was more than willing to die for him, but sometimes it also felt like they _lived_ for one another; each curtailing their wants, needs and ambitions in life so as not to hurt the other’s progress, but as a consequence, one had accidentally overshadowed the other, completely by chance, though Mickey would never bring that up, had never been wary or resentful of his sister’s success.

Though their trust in each other was absolute and unconditional, their lives had never been their own because of their upbringing, their natural distrust of other people, and their chosen profession. It had been difficult for them to create a space that didn’t occupy the both of them, to let go of the other’s hand and do something that didn’t necessarily include the other, but didn’t exclude them as well. But sometimes, on dark nights after drinking one too many bottles of vodka and reminiscing on one too many a friend lost, Mandy would have the crazy idea to quit it all, go clean, find a man or woman to settle down with and do stupid regular outside people shit with and come home at night without having to drive around the block three times to check if she was being followed. Maybe have a kid or two. Maybe use her observation skills to ruin surprise parties instead of lives. Maybe use her ease with a knife for roasted turkeys and apple pies instead of human stomachs and necks. Maybe.

The taxi hit a pothole and Mandy snapped out of her reverie, automatically checking around her to make sure the taxi driver was still going in the right direction. Her phone’s screen had gone dark and she pressed her finger to the fingerprint scanner to find herself looking at the contact list again. Maybe she could do it. Maybe she could be free. And maybe this was the person she could do that with. She brushed her finger tenderly over the name and smiled to herself as she reread it.

Ian O’Neill.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With lots of love to my alpha, beta and omega.  
> Chapter title gracefully supplied by the wonderful Twelve.


	2. Explosive Operations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once he was sure that no motorcycle was following them, he relaxed, only the tiniest bit, and the gun slipped out of his left hand and onto the backseat. He slumped sideways and realized that blood was dripping from his hand, a thin stream of red running down his arm, seeping into his clothes. He sighed, resigned and tired as he gazed at the shards of car window lodged into his hand before looking for the phone somewhere around the guns and glass.
> 
> “Yello?” Mickey tried, and a mic clicked on on the other side of the line.
> 
> “Ah! Davis, you’re still alive, that’s brilliant,” came Bravo’s distracted voice, dry as could be, and he couldn’t tell whether she was upset with him or if it was just her regular British tone of voice. He also didn’t care.
> 
> “I think you’re gonna lose the deposit on this rental,” he replied and was awarded with an involuntary snort before Bravo coughed a few times to cover it up.

Construction had made the ride from the airport twice as long, traffic had been worse than shit, and Mickey was cranky, hungry, and overall whiny as he pressed his thumb to the finger scanner and slid the key into the front door of Mandy’s apartment, having come straight from the airport despite his house being only 6 blocks away from hers. The job had taken him a total of 9 days because he had spent 3 of those going dark and then 2 more traveling through other countries to fly back out to NYC in coach. He ached for his own bed and a stiff drink, and to sit on his sister’s ridiculously comfortable couch and bitch about the incompetencies of minions. It didn’t help that he had spent most of his mandatorily imposed downtime thinking about one particular person and that he wanted to pick Mandy’s brain about how to go about it, or him, and possibly put a name to the face because for all of his research in his downtime, Mickey had completely failed to find the guy. At least the project had been successful. Partially.

He swung open the door and walked in, letting it slam shut and lock behind him as he dropped his bag and kicked off his shoes in the doorway. The familiar combination of the sound of the shower running and loud rock music playing in Mandy’s bathroom put a tired smile on his face as he dragged his socked feet to the couch while taking off his jacket in the most ungraceful way he could manage. Mickey half-fell onto the dark blue cushions with one arm caught in the sleeve and was happy that his sister couldn’t see him struggling like a toddler until he finally managed to rid himself of the treacherous piece of clothing. As his body finally relaxed, he remembered that drink he wanted to have and he cracked open one eye to stare at Mandy’s liquor cabinet 3 meters away, deciding that alcohol was overrated. He leaned his head backward and exhaled, feeling like he was melting more and more into the cushions as he breathed, yet his mind wouldn’t let him stop thinking about all the mistakes and issues he had encountered since he had left Mandy at the networking event.

He had wiped the hotel room and dropped off his gear at the designated point, beelining it to the networking event’s bar with the intention of getting one drink and disappearing into one of the many groups of boasting men talking shit. He should have known better than to be _too_ inviting to the first woman who pounced on him, especially when it turned out to be Sophia Giordano, the wife of a local politician. However, rumors in the underworld had it that the politician was dirty, and _very_ dirty at that, so Mickey had been intrigued, hoping the wife would slip up and reveal information he could use later. It took him all of 8 minutes and another drink to figure out that, though Sophia proved to be talkative enough when provoked, her husband had kept her clean, though she had a keen enough mind to realize something was going on, mistakenly concluding that he had a mistress, and if he was screwing other people, so would she.

She turned out to be quite a fascinating woman; sharp, intelligent, brutally honest, quite funny, and a businesswoman in her own right, all of which he would have appreciated more if he wasn’t completely burned out and irritated to the core, so he tried to keep the conversation going, laughing when she laughed, stopping himself from brushing her hand off of his arm when she lingered too long. The thought made him chuckle again, how forward and transparent she had been about her intentions, which in itself was a feature he could appreciate, if only it hadn’t been attached to someone of the opposite sex. Not that he hadn’t had sex with women before as a way to get out of sticky situations; he had, many times indeed, but that was simply for professional reasons, a means to an end to save his hide, to finish a mission. He could see the allure, could appreciate the beauty of women, their inner strength and powerful wrath, their cunning ways of thinking when they had been wronged. He liked women, but only in the way that he also liked art; to look at from afar, not to touch, and to leave it hanging in a gallery far, far away from him.

His thoughts turned from Sophia to a completely different piece of art he had seen from across the room, a piece of art he would have very much wanted to take home if it weren’t completely against his and Mandy’s rules after a mission.

Sophia had said something genuinely funny, and Mickey had genuinely laughed and looked up from his cup to find her flirtily gazing up at him, so he had averted his eyes to the ballroom floor, making sure that Mandy was still in the same location near the food where he had found her earlier. He could see Mandy walking in his direction, but his eyes were inexplicably pulled to the ballroom door, magnetically locking with a man standing at the entrance. Mickey hated to even describe it as lust at first sight, but it had definitely been lust, and the proverbial bolt of lightning had only happened when he had locked eyes with the guy, so he’d let the philosophical question of ‘first sights’ lie for now. There had been something about that man, something strangely alluring and terribly dangerous, like heat radiating off him in waves, and though Mickey’s brain had been throwing up red flags left and right, telling him to look away, stop looking, don’t get anywhere near this guy, Mickey hadn’t paid it any attention, silently begging the man to come closer. The man hadn’t looked away, even with people passing through their line of vision, and with a jolt, he started walking straight to Mickey as if Mickey’s invisible hook had caught him and was reeling him in as fast as he could. Mickey couldn’t stop him, didn’t want to stop him, but he knew he had to, knew that whatever that man was, he was bad news. The problem was that Mickey really felt like reading the paper.

From the corner of his eye, he could see a familiar figure move in his direction, and he realized that Mandy was very purposely walking perpendicular to the man, most likely working to intercept him and keep him away from Mickey. Sophia had also noticed that she had lost Mickey’s attention and she touched his arm, causing Mickey to tear his eyes away from the man who was moving towards him like a wildfire. He returned his focus to his glass, to the orange zest floating in the liquid he had barely touched, to the terrible elevator music being played in the room, to the weight of Sophia’s hand on his arm, to _anything_ but the heat he felt coming his way.

He looked up from his glass for a split second to acknowledge Sophia and smile in her direction so she could remove her hand from his arm and then looked back down at his glass, counting down seconds to give himself something to hold onto, to force himself not to ditch her and just walk up to this random guy he’s never seen in his life. After 3 excruciatingly long seconds, he saw something move very quickly in the corner of his eye and looked up to see the guy deftly catching Mandy as she tripped, then Mandy taking advantage of the situation and turning him so his back was to Mickey.

Mickey smiled to himself, albeit a little sadly, knowing what was going to happen next and hating himself for not wanting it to happen, for wanting Mandy to fail to keep the man’s attention, for wanting that man to turn around and walk to Mickey, fuck the consequences. But Mandy was successful in her mini-mission, giving Mickey the okay-sign as she floundered all over the guy to keep his attention. He didn’t blame him; Mandy had made it an art to keep anyone’s attention for as long as she wanted it. Her skills had saved both their hides on numerous occasions, and Mickey was sure that this was probably for the best as well.

He looked at Sophia and sighed deeply, mentally shaking off his reluctance at leaving because he knew, he just _knew_ this guy was going to be trouble. Sophia looked up to find him staring at her, and he let a seductive smile spread across his face, tilting his head a little as he flicked his eyes from her eyes to her lips and back.

“Can you drive?” he asked as he reached out to tuck a stray piece of hair behind her ear, and she leaned into the touch, her eyes sparkling as she nodded at him, a wicked smile pulling at her lips.

Mickey let his hand slide down her arm until he took her hand in his, briefly debating if he should lift the gorgeous diamond bracelet she was wearing but deciding against it. He could see Mandy still falling over herself in apology in his peripheral vision, and a little pang of jealousy shot through his gut that he decided to blatantly ignore. Returning his focus on Sophia, he lifted her hand up to his lips and pressed a soft kiss to it while staring deeply into her eyes, and he could see her all but swoon on her feet. He then offered her his right arm, which she gracefully took, and steadily escorted her towards the door, dropping his left arm down his leg to brush off some lint and flip off Mandy as he walked away.

On the way to the door, Mickey had to skirt around a group of very obnoxious men, loudly boasting about men being better than women at the stock market thing because they were just _smarter_ , they had that hunter instinct that just _knew_ , and that women should stick to the coffee-making. Mickey suppressed his initial reaction of grabbing the syringe he had hidden in his jacket pocket and easing some horse tranquilizer into one of their veins, but the tranquilizer would take immediate effect and he had no way of not being in the vicinity after injecting it, so that plan wouldn’t work. Instead, he softly bumped into the rowdiest one of them and deftly lifted his wallet from his back pocket, shoving it into his own pocket as he shuffled by. Their loud laughing continued, and they were none the wiser.

He opened the door for Sophia, as a true gentleman would, and took one last look at the room to find Mandy still in conversation with the redheaded man, which increased his chances of Mandy figuring out his name and him being able to subtly stalk him later. The man looked over his shoulder at the bar and Mickey’s heart skipped violently. Was he looking for _him?_ Was it just coincidence? From his angle, he could see a wave of disappointment slide off the man’s face before it turned into a smile as he returned his gaze to Mandy and held out his arm to her.

Next to him, Sophia had started talking about this great restaurant she knew, and Mickey turned away, closing the ballroom door and feeling his thoughts go all over the place. He had initially planned to entertain Sophia some more, see if he could extract any other information from her regarding her husband that they could use for blackmail or sell to other contractors to use, but his mind was no longer interested in that plan. He had to go home and sleep, or find a bar where he could find a stiff drink and a stiff man, but entertaining anyone was no longer part of his brain’s itinerary.

He led Sophia to the valet, and as the valet attendant had her spotless Bentley brought around for her, he bid her good night, giving her a long kiss on the cheek before opening the door on the driver's side for her. She seemed slightly bewildered as he thanked her for the enjoyable evening and stimulating conversation, and she blinked at him a few times, her mouth opening as if to try and convince him otherwise, clearly not having anticipated that move. After a moment of consideration, she composed herself and chuckled, sighing as she looked Mickey up and down once more before sliding behind the wheel of her car. She winked at him before driving away, and he waved once before she turned the corner. He then walked back to the valets, took the stolen wallet from his pocket, fished out a few $20 bills and handed the money to them. He then walked to the front of the hotel and looked up at the sky, counting 2, maybe 3 stars, and started walking to clear his head from random redheaded men.

A few blocks away, he took the wallet from his pocket once more and pulled out the rest of the money, dropping it in a homeless person’s cup before rubbing his fingerprints off on his pants and throwing the wallet into a restaurant’s dumpster. Just as he was wondering whether the conference attendee list was public, his phone started vibrating in his inner jacket pocket. He looked around him out of habit as he pulled the phone from his pocket, noting the people walking around, the cars driving past, the music coming from the bars, and concluded that there were enough people and enough noise to cover his conversation before accepting the call.

“Michael, so good of you to pick up,” his handler opened, starting with one of his opening code phrases. Their mobile connections would never be completely secure, but the chance of being tapped was relatively small. Still, their handler liked using a little bit of code and misdirection to their phone communication to add some disturbance to the mix if they were tapped or overheard, which meant that half the time, no one ever said what they truly meant to say. They would therefore only call them if there was an urgent or last-minute request.

“Jim, the pleasure is all mine,” answered Mickey with one of his code phrases, meaning he was available to speak to.

“A really interesting job came up, would you be available for a presentation next week Saturday?” Mickey’s interests peaked at the coded message; he hadn’t received a request for a presentation, i.e. a chemical-related job, in a few months. Next week Saturday translated to _that_ Saturday i.e. the day starting in a few hours, and depending on where in the world the job was, that could mean he’d have to leave right away.

“Will I be needing assistance?” he asked, calculating the traffic to the airport on a Friday night in his head, trying to factor in the time it would take Mandy to get ready.

“No assistant necessary, it’s just a quick run-through of the company’s new PR plan. Shouldn’t take more than 3 hours.”

A PR plan, which translated to an explosive, got Mickey _very_ excited. But with 3 hours to catch his flight, time had just gotten really tight.

“Let me check my schedule when I get to the office on Monday, Jim, and I’ll give you a call,” he replied, already raising his hand to hail a cab as he accepted the job.

“Looking forward to it, Michael!” his handler gleefully answered and hung up, and Mickey stuffed his phone back in his jacket pocket.

“Come _on_ …” Mickey urged, seeing taxi after taxi drive by on a busy Friday night in Manhattan until one flashed his headlights at him in acknowledgment, and he sighed in relief. He knew the details of the job would have already been sent by encrypted message through their closed network, as well as his ticket, cover story, and itinerary, but he still needed a little time to go through the job requirements to prepare a list of the necessary backup material for the job and  an overnight bag.

In what could only be described as a miracle, Mickey had managed to both beat NYC Friday-night traffic and the airport security and was fast asleep 3 hours later in the second-to-last window seat of the A330 SwissAir flight from Newark to Zurich, waking up only to accept a lukewarm cup of tea before falling asleep again until it was time to deplane 7 hours later. After shoving overpriced airport fast food down his throat, he proceeded to his connecting flight to Budapest, mentally cursing Jim for having put him in the last window seat that couldn’t recline for 3 hours.

After clearing customs in Budapest, Mickey and his one overnight bag walked towards a tall blonde man wearing a dark suit, a chauffeur hat and holding a sign for 'Mr. Davis'.

“Mr. Davis,” the man nodded to Mickey as he approached and held out his hand, “welcome to Budapest.”

Mickey calmly waited, not shaking the man’s hand and staring him in the eyes until the side of his lip twitched in what was almost a smirk.

“So good of you to visit our lovely country,” the man finally said, and Mickey raised an eyebrow before shaking his hand.

“The pleasure is all mine,” Mickey responded, and he followed the man towards the company car.

The facility was a good 3-hour drive away, and during the ride, the driver briefed Mickey on the identity of the client and pointed out the manila folder and two duffel bags on the seat next to him containing the items in Mickey’s list of necessary backup material he had sent the night before and a nice selection of weapons for him to equip himself as he saw fit. Self-protection was essential because, as much as clients needed his expertise for the creation of weapons, it wouldn’t be the first time that someone tried to double-cross an agency’s contractor after they’d performed the work, and it was bad business for the agency to lose their specialized contractors. On big, risky missions, the agency would send along a bodyguard. Solo missions, which were by nature the riskiest, were only allocated to those experts that could also sufficiently defend themselves. The payout, however, was magnificent, and Mickey already had his eye on some updated equipment for his own lab.

Mickey went over the bag of tools and materials, transferred a few knives, guns and ammo to his ankle holster and his bag and opened the manila folder to read through the file one more time. He went over the specific instructions agreed between the agency and the client, and checked the copies of the confirmation of completion of work document to be signed by the client before he could leave. He asked the driver on how to pronounce a few words in Hungarian and practiced them a few times to feel the way they flowed off his tongue. Then he sat back and relaxed for the remaining 2 and a half hours of the drive.

After what felt like a million grass fields with cows and rickety roads, the facility finally came into view. It was a rundown but clean-looking warehouse in the middle of nowhere, equipped with cameras and a number of goons with machine guns hanging from their hips. Confidently walking up to what appeared to be the chief, Mickey shook hands with him as a young woman slid up behind him, quickly interpreting what the chief said to English, and translating Mickey’s reply into Hungarian.

The chief was an older man with dark eyes and salt-and-pepper hair, the laugh lines on his face making him look more like someone’s happy grandfather than the overzealous religious maniac he actually was. The crew guarding the facility appeared calm, and though they were holding rather impressive looking weapons, none seemed trigger-happy enough to accidentally point it in Mickey’s direction and squeeze the trigger just yet. The chief exchanged a few pleasantries, and Mickey obliged with the small talk; yes the flight went well, no he had no issues at the border, yes Hungary looked beautiful from the sky. Mickey waited for the real conversation to begin, but the chief nodded as he walked Mickey to his working station, and stopped just outside of the plastic bubble as if in thought, asking Mickey a question in Hungarian.

“The chief has one extra request,” the woman translated for him, and Mickey suppressed the smirk he felt coming. He had known something was up, and therefore politely referred the chief to his agency, telling him that he needed the agency’s approval to change the plans they had previously agreed upon.

The chief's eyes went flat and dangerous for a moment, and Mickey’s hand itched to find a weapon of some sort, but a smile spread over the older man’s face before he clapped Mickey hard on the shoulder as he pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket.

As the chief had a very enthusiastic sounding conversation with the agency, Mickey requested coffee and food from the Hungarian interpreter and waited to eventually be handed the phone. In the meantime, he curiously walked around the facility, carefully noting each security camera and concluding that they were plugged into a local framework, which meant that he could probably corrupt the recorded videos if need be. The site was equipped with basic furniture and facilities, including a small, plastic-enclosed makeshift room that would function as a controlled area, and a number of camping supplies piled up in a corner. Mickey groaned softly as he took in where he’d be sleeping for the length of his mission. He counted the goons, their guns, and the exits. He examined the chemicals and tools provided for the bomb and devised 4 backup plans. He tied his shoe and took his butterfly knife out of his ankle holster in case the negotiations with the agency didn’t proceed as expected.

A few minutes later, the woman shimmied up to him, handing Mickey the phone as he had expected.

“Jim?”

Jim sighed heavily on the other side of the phone, and Mickey turned away from the woman so she wouldn’t be able to follow along to the entire conversation.

“Michael, happy to hear you arrived safe and sound,” he started, “Look, the chief wants some special chemical included in the product, but he can’t tell me exactly what it is and what it does, except that it apparently makes spectacular explosions.”

Mickey grimaced at the thought of having to amend his original design, but he was nothing if not flexible and customer-friendly when he got paid to do so.

“I can play with the chemical and see what it does, check how it interacts with my usual mix,” he suggested, “I’ll probably have to amend my design, though, and this job will take longer than originally planned.”

“Understood, I’ll add those extra costs to the contract. Anything else?”

Mickey ran through his usual scenarios, thinking of how he could amend his design, maybe separate the ignition and blasting chemicals for improved stability.

“What do I do if the chemical makes the bomb too volatile, or unstable?”

There was a slight pause before Jim answered.

“The chief was adamant that the chemical is included, so try to use it, even if just the smallest amount. Increased volatility will be his problem, but if the chemical makes the product completely unstable, just disregard it, hand over the product without using the chemical and I’ll deal with him once you’ve left the premises. The chief doesn’t like to be argued with.”

Mickey hummed in agreement, and after Jim told him what parts of the contract he had to add by hand, he handed the phone back to the interpreter. She ran back to the chief and presented him the phone, and after what looked like quick-fire negotiations, Mickey was handed back the phone one last time and received permission from Jim to proceed with the request as they had discussed earlier.

The chief looked pleased, explaining to Mickey (through the interpreter) that the presence of the chemical would send a message to their enemy, that the bomb wasn’t meant to cause total destruction, but _enough_ destruction to clearly point out the message. He philosophically waxed on for a few minutes and Mickey tried to appear interested, but personally didn’t give a shit about the who and the why, more annoyed at having to use a chemical that would most likely fuck up a perfectly good bomb. But the client was King, so he kept his mouth shut, smiled when necessary and shook the chief’s hand when he was finally done droning on and ready to leave. Mickey walked back to the car, grabbed his two bags and got ready to work.

Though his working space was small, Mickey’s fingers started to itch when he was presented with his tools; both the standard apparatus and chemicals the agency had told the client to prepare as well as the mystery chemical and a few extras that they had provided, just because. He grabbed the tool bag provided by the agency and laid those out on a separate table so as not to accidentally mix them with the client’s tools. He took a picture of all the tools just to be sure, and then turned towards the array of chemicals like a kid in a candy shop.

He started out with the mystery chemical itself, taking it outside to perform a few semi-controlled experiments with the substance to gauge its volatility in combination with the blasting chemicals he was planning to use. After 8 experiments, it became clear to Mickey that it was impossible to include any substantial amount of the chemical into the available combinations of blasting chemicals without the whole thing immediately detonating. To appease the chief, Mickey changed the composition of the ignition part of his bomb and incorporated only the tiniest bit of the chemical, the equivalent of a pinch of salt in a pot of water. The combination was manageable, but still far more volatile than he liked.

Mickey then sketched out a new design, a unique framework to house the device in, giving instructions to the interpreter to give to minions left and right for the parts he needed, which included a number of extra pipes that had to be brought in from outside. As the work came to a standstill for lack of certain equipment, Mickey was provided with a few basic ham-and-cheese sandwiches and bottles of water, probably because they thought he was American and they weren’t sure if he could stomach real Hungarian food, or maybe they just didn’t want to waste perfectly good salami on his uneducated palate. Though he was slightly disappointed in the spread, he also wasn't keen on informing random people that he was born in the Ukraine and could therefore easily stomach some thick, spicy Hungarian stew so he took his sad sandwiches and shoveled them into his mouth, washing it down with water before having a chat with the next-in-line about his progress. Afterward, he took a light cat nap in a sleeping bag as the jet lag was catching up to him through the fading adrenaline.

A few hours later, a big truck came driving up to the warehouse, the growling sound of its engine providing a rude awakening to Mickey, and he tucked the butterfly knife he had instinctively grabbed back inside his pocket. He shimmied out of the sleeping bag and yawned, stretching his back as he located the interpreter and ordered another round of coffee and sandwiches, watching his requested equipment make their way to the plastic bubble. He loved it when clients just gave him a free range with equipment, not looking on every penny or trying to get him to substitute essential safety pieces for something cheaper because that generally reflected badly on the end result for which _he_ was responsible.

It took him close to two and a half days, give or take a few hours for sleep, to finish the new design of his device, including one miniature version without all the bells and whistles that he took outside to detonate. The goons and their guns followed him into the grass field next to the facility, brooding but not saying anything as he slowly walked away with a mini bomb and very carefully set it on the ground half a yard away, then turned around and started searching for stones. He found a few rocks of the size he needed and placed them in front of the mini bomb, then walked to one of the lower-ranked goons and asked for his gun. The goon frowned, either pretending not to understand the question or truly not understanding English, and he turned around and yelled. The interpreter came running, not having anticipated that Mickey would try to converse with any of the hired help. Once she had caught her breath, Mickey repeated his question, the interpreter translated, and the goon shook his head. Mickey closed his eyes and counted to 3, repeating the question and holding out one hand, eyebrows raised as he pointedly looked at all 10 other goons whose triggers were suddenly halfway pulled. Everyone turned to the main goon, and after a few seconds, he nodded, and Mickey was handed a handgun with the express _look_ of ‘don’t you try anything stupid’. He wasn’t sure if trying to detonate the bomb was stupid or not.

He walked half a yard away from the bomb and told all the goons that had walked with him to get behind him or take cover, which was quickly translated by the interpreter. He then waited a few seconds, aimed the gun at one of the stones, and fired. It took him 3 tries to get a stone to perfectly bump into the bomb for the bomb’s volatility to show itself. The whole thing exploded in a cloud of dust, a big column of purple flames shooting straight into the sky, courtesy of the new chemical. After a moment of stunned silence, the goons cheered and applauded him, and the one whose gun he had borrowed clapped him amicably on the back as he grinned down at him, saying something to him in Hungarian that felt a lot like ‘that was fun’. When the dust and dirt cleared, Mickey found a small crater where the bomb had been, and he snickered to himself in delight. Although it was better to have experimented and proven what the bigger sized bomb was going to look like, he had really just created a mini version so he could play some more with the chemical as he saw no way of studying its composition or bringing the substance home with him. The fact that he had amused the local community was an extra.

After his little experiment, Mickey modified a few tiny details on the bigger version, and the end result was a highly volatile bomb the size of a shoe box with an anticipated controlled blasting range of 20 meters and enough power to take out a high-rise building but designed to focus the damage upward instead of in a circle outward. He had created upward blasting bombs before, but took careful notes on how he had modified his initial design to accommodate the new chemical and the cleaner separation of ignition and blaster components as well as the materials he used and the supplier of the very volatile, and hard to come by, chemical. It was frankly a masterpiece if Mickey could say so himself. He secretly named her Serena.

The chief was contacted, but Mickey was informed that it would take him at least four hours to show up again, not having expected Mickey to finish on such short notice. Mickey put in a short call to the agency for extraction within the same time period and then started cleaning up his working space, returning his tools to his bag, wiping off every surface where he could have left his fingerprints, even though he used gloves for most of the work. About an hour later, when he was satisfied with his clean-up, he was surprised with a tray of fresh bread, Hungarian cheeses, traditional Hungarian salamis, and fruit as well as a glass of fruit brandy. Mickey skeptically raised an eyebrow at the alcohol to the interpreter, and she sighed deeply, motioning towards the group of goons with her chin. Mickey thanked her for the tray and set it down on a clean work table. He grabbed his glass and walked towards the group of goons, happily noting that they were holding a similar glass with similar content, which made him less anxious but did not completely wipe away any worries of poisoning. The goons’ conversation faltered at his approach, but he raised his glass to them and said cheers, waiting until they understood what he was doing and then cheerfully raising their own, yelling _‘egészségedre’_ and trying to have him repeat the word a few times until he could pronounce it properly. He smiled as they drank, and the sweet fruit brandy tasted funny on his tongue, but he didn’t feel woozy or abnormally sick, and he nodded when more brandy was poured into his cup as the bottle went around. He called over the interpreter, and when she shyly refused, went back to grab the tray and walked over to her to politely ask if she would join him so she could translate something for him. She sighed again, knowing full well that he wasn’t about to have an in-depth conversation with all of the men around, but walked after him anyway. As they walked, Mickey asked her for her name, and she told him it was Anna. She didn’t ask him his.

Coming back to the group, Mickey presented the tray to the men, and at first they were confused, the interpreter letting Mickey know that that was his food, they’d already had their own. He told them it was in his culture to share with those who shared with him, and he took a piece of salami to prove that he wasn’t suspicious of their food, just friendly. His eyes widened as a blast of spiciness hit the back of his tongue while he chewed, the deep and meaty flavour of the salami washing away the sweet taste of brandy, and a few of the men chuckled at his expression as he hummed and nodded in appreciation.

With Anna’s help, the group talked in loud, broken sentences and lots of gestures, and albeit that he looked happy and relaxed, Mickey kept a close eye on the amount of brandy being poured into his glass and from which bottle. He knew that professional killers didn’t give a shit if you were nice to them or not, but sometimes it provided for the benefit of the doubt, or at the very least for not unnecessarily stabbings in the back, so he made it a practice to get to know the people a _little_ when he did solo missions. Maybe he’d even get a reference out of it later.

An hour or so later, the goons received a call that the chief would be arriving soon, and the food and drink were hastily cleaned up and put away, shirts brushed clean, smiles wiped off the faces. Mickey quickly left Jim a message about the change of plans before changing into a clean pair of black slacks, a black shirt, and black jacket, sliding his Walther against the small of his back and putting on his formal white gloves so he wouldn’t get any fingerprints on the bomb. He put his folder and a pen on the working table, carefully checking that he had amended all the necessary clauses in the contract before walking out of the working area and in front of the plastic tent to wait for the chief. Anna walked up to him and stood a step behind him, not saying a word.

The sound of multiple engines announced the arrival of the chief and, apparently, an entire entourage. Not long after, the chief and 4 other older men walked in, looking extremely formal in a full military garb, stripes and all, as if they had all been pulled out of some official, high-level meeting, though the smug smirks on their faces told Mickey that they didn’t care what meeting they were pulled out of. The chief walked up front, talking loudly and excitedly, clearly eager to get his hands on his newest acquisition as he subtly beelined it for the working space.

Another group of men entered the facility, and Mickey’s alarm bells went off straight away. The eight men were young, muscular and with a threatening air that the goons did not possess, the type of men that trained like soldiers and liked it. They stood just inside the door as they looked over the facility before spreading out to cover all the exits. Mickey ignored them and the fact that the chief had brought security personnel. As the chief came closer and his smile grew bigger, Mickey worked hard to suppress his sigh. He held out his hand to shake the chief’s and then held open the tent for the chief to enter the working space, promptly closing it to keep out the rest of the entourage.

Without saying a word, Mickey guided the chief to the one decent chair he had found in the facility and put him in front of the clean working table, walking away to get the bomb where he had put it so he could provide her a bigger entrance -- clients always loved that. Mickey gently lifted the bomb and placed her on the clean table, effectively showing the chief that he had curbed the chemical’s extreme volatility to a slightly more manageable level before lifting the black sheet off of the device and stepping back. Predictably, the chief’s face lit up, a grin spreading over his face, and he stood up slowly, walking around to table to examine the bomb from every angle, his demeanor getting more and more excited as he looked at all the little parts and pieces. Mickey gave him a few minutes, waiting for the chief to finish gazing lovingly at his newest toy. It took him a while, but eventually the chief looked up and sat back down, eyebrows expectedly raised as he looked at Mickey, and Mickey signaled Anna to come closer so she could interpret for him.

Keeping his tone professional and neutral, he summarized how the bomb was structured and constructed, then described how he had experimented with the chemical and how he had incorporated it into the detonation part of the bomb. He explained that, because of the new chemical, he could only estimate at the blasting power and expected damage, but if experience told him anything, he theorized that the chemical would probably increase both.

He took a pause for dramatic effect, letting the chief drink in the first wave of information he’d provided him. When he seemed ready, he started with the risks. Because of the new structure, direct contact with liquids or extreme humidity were out of the question as the bomb could prematurely combust, so the bomb couldn’t be placed in some damp cellar or steam room. The new chemical had also made the bomb extremely volatile, and without having been provided with the exact composition of the chemical and with the little time he’d had to experiment and construct the bomb, Mickey couldn’t tell exactly _how_ volatile it was, so he cautioned the chief that any movement beyond gentle rocking was to be strictly avoided. The rocky road they rode in on; to be avoided. Delivery in a regular civilian mail truck; to be avoided. Anything less than how a mother treats her newborn; to be avoided. The chief irritably nodded once, not wanting to be kept waiting from showing off his toy by Mickey’s cautionary tale, but Mickey kept his gaze for a few more moments before sliding the folder closer and taking out the stack of documents. Thumbing through the pages a little, he carefully separated the documents and laid the three copies down in front of the chief. He briefly explained the content, of which the chief was already aware, pointing to the areas where the chief’s signature was required to formally confirm that he had understood all the risks as had been laid out in the document as well as verbally explained to him, and took all responsibility from that moment forward with regard to the repercussions of the device as delivered ‘as is’. The chief signed the copies, and Mickey asked Anna if she could sign as a witness, which she begrudgingly did after glaring bullets at him. He smiled at her and thanked them both, presenting one copy to the chief for his records and sliding the other two back into his folder.

Finally, he provided the chief with a key and a small box with an on/off switch, a button, and a little screen, as had been requested, protected by a cover that was locked with the key. Hidden within the structure so not every idiot could find it or accidentally press it, he pointed out the switch button on the bomb that had to be pressed down for 10 seconds for the light to switch on and the bomb to be irrevocably activated before flipping the switch on the box and pressing that button for the 60 minute timer to initiate, which would start counting down on the little screen.

The chief’s face split into a massive grin, control and dominance radiating from the man as he held the power of destruction in the palm of his hand. That was Mickey’s cue to leave, and the most dangerous part of the mission; the goods had been delivered, there was a fucking army standing outside the door, and it wholly depended on the reliability of the client for him not to turn around and massacre Mickey for the fun of it. He held out his hand to the chief, who gave him a long, firm handshake before completely ignoring his departure as he walked in circles around the bomb, admiring it with a predatory look on his face.

Mickey grabbed the folder with the signed documents and nodded to Anna as he quietly walked by her to grab his bags. He never spoke in those fragile moments, not wanting to break whatever spell his devices had over their new owner, keeping their attention on his ingenuities instead of on him, hoping they’d forget that he knew their face, their voice, where they were and what they wanted to do with it. So instead, he only ever nodded. Without another backward glance at the chief or his newest toy, he companionably nodded at the goons, ignoring the entourage and new military personnel, and walked outside, finding four town cars, a little van, and eight motorcycles all waiting to be boarded. The particular mix of vehicles nagged at him, but he walked to the lesser of the four town cars running outside, nodding at his driver before getting in and buckling up. With professional haste, the car drove down the dirt road from the warehouse and sped up the moment it hit more manageable asphalt.

The driver handed Mickey a secure phone about 10 minutes into the ride as they drove on a long, straight, bumpy and desolate road through a few tiny villages, and Mickey called the first number, Jim’s voice blooming up on the other side after 3 rings.

“Michael, so good of you to call me,” Jim started, as usual.

“Jim, the pleasure is all mine,” Mickey replied, as usual.

“Do tell.”

Speeding down a random road in Budapest, Mickey started describing the client; his name, his voice, his mannerisms, his wedding ring, his clothes, his rank -- any information the agency could add to his file and potentially use as blackmail later on. As he was sure that the agency had already had a surveillance drone pass over the exterior part of the facility to take a peek, like they usually did, he outlined the interior; the layout of the building, the setup of the workspace, the security cameras. Jim interrupted him only to ask a more detailed description of the security cameras, and Mickey tried to remember if he had seen the actual mainframe they should have been hooked up to, or if that had only been his assumption. That part completed, he very briefly describing the entourage, both the older men and the military boys, before indicating the number of goons that had been present, and the interpreter. Jim didn’t request further information, and Mickey was happy not having to give away information about Anna that she didn’t know could be used against her.

Next came the technical part; the amendments to the original design of the bomb, and the addition of the new chemical. Jim, not being an extremely chemically-experienced guy, just recorded the minimum information necessary to record a change in design, and Mickey would eventually send in the new design to be added to his file.

“Anything else to add, Michael?” Jim concluded after the briefing, and Mickey paused, wondering if it made a difference to provide even more detail if he was going to redesign the bomb himself later.

“Client has been fully briefed on the volatility of the bomb, but the additional chemical will make the device extremely hard to transport, so expect a complaint of that nature. He’d literally have to airlift it out of there in some sort of balance-maintaining device because the first half mile of road from the facility is far too bumpy to drive it.”

Jim grunted in response, and Mickey could hear keys ticking in the background.

“That is unless he’s planning on getting his marks to the facility where the bomb is,” Jim commented off-handedly, and Mickey nodded to himself.

“Yeah, I guess that’d be--”

The sound of an explosion vibrated through the car, and the driver swerved only the tiniest bit before getting the car back into a straight line and flooring it, moving away from the explosion as fast as possible. Mickey whipped his head around to find a smoke cloud rising up from where he had just come, and he closed his eyes and sighed. Stupid people. Fucking _idiots_ that never followed his instructions. Poor Serena. He vaguely noted Jim’s voice coming from the phone, but it took him a few more seconds to respond.

“Davis, report!” Jim’s voice was loud and demanding, though neither agitated nor menacing, but Mickey had a feeling it wasn’t the first time he had said it.

“Ehm, Jim…” he said, feeling very articulate, running a hand through his black hair and suppressing another sigh as he tried not to think of Anna and her 2-year old daughter with pigtails and the group of goons that were high school friends and best men at each other’s weddings, “I think the device just detonated.”

A moment of silence followed, and he could hear Jim’s mic clicking off, meaning that he was probably verifying where the explosion had come from, and if it was the one Mickey had just built. All Mickey’s explodable devices had a heavily encrypted mini-tracker hidden in their design so that they couldn’t be used against him, and to keep a tally of which ones were still active. However, given that the device had a 60-minute buffer, and Mickey had hardly been driving for more than 15, it was more likely that the bomb had been handled too roughly, and had exploded as a result of it. There was the tiny chance that the chief had had another bomb already placed in the warehouse, or that the chemical had been moved and exploded instead, but the shock would also have set off his bomb, so there would have had to be two explosions where now he had only felt one. His head snapped up as the thought hit him, and he heard the click of Jim’s mic coming back online.

“It detonated while being transported!” Mickey exclaimed before Jim got a chance to respond.

“Yeahhh… the drone was still in the neighbourhood and the warehouse seems to be intact. It looks like the explosion came from about half a kilometer south of the warehouse on some country road.”

The image of the town cars, the van, and the motorcycles popped up in Mickey’s head, and he whipped around again to look behind him.

“Jim, do you have eyes on us?”

“No, not right this moment, but I can in a minute, why?”

“I think we’re being followed.”

Without muting his mic this time, Jim started shouting orders to several people in the room.

“Station 1, track Davis, get that drone in place, I need eyes on them. Echo, get me an unoccupied safe house in Budapest near their location. Bravo, take over!”

Mickey put the phone on speaker and laid it next to him as he unbuckled and pulled down the seats. He reached into the trunk, feeling around for the duffel bag he knew should be there and, having found it, dragged the whole thing to the backseat, slamming the seats back in place and unzipping the bag, taking out several handguns and magazines as well as a sniper rifle. He loaded a handgun and handed it to the driver as he kept an eye on the road behind him. He heard the driver cock the gun, but didn’t check to see if he placed it within easy reach where a sudden surge of the car couldn’t displace it. Grabbing the sniper rifle, Mickey unscrewed the scope from it and set the rifle on the floor of the car, then kneeled backward on the car’s backseat and tried to steady himself as best as possible on the rickety road, holding the scope steady with one hand as his other blindly felt around for his phone while he was gazing through the scope to see if he could locate the motorcycles that had no doubt been following them in case something went wrong with the bomb. And something had _just_ gone wrong with the bomb. He anticipated that their orders included a ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ kind of situation. There was hardly any honour, or trust, among thieves or bomb-creating criminals for that matter.

“Can you see me yet, Jim?” Mickey’s fingers finally found the phone as he was leaning sideways on the backseat and he laid it down on the rear cover, yelling towards it as he tried to see through the cloud of dust the car kicking up.

“Our primary drone is simply not fast enough to catch up to your car right now,” a young, female voice responded, and Mickey recognized her by her British accent as the voice of a woman he’d spoken to twice before, both on highly sensitive, bomb-and-technology-related issues that he had had to fix on the spot with her in his ear. She sounded excited, and though excitement wasn’t exactly Mickey’s mindset at that particular moment, he could appreciate her enthusiasm as well as her technical expertise. He also now understood who Jim had referred to as Bravo. A short pause and a lot of tapping later brought her back without any further prompting.

“This dirt road has no CCTV to speak of, of course, just _look_ at it. ‘S probably why the client chose this place in the first place, so I --” _tap tap tap_ “-- am going to have to try to find a satellite I can snoop off of.”

She went silent for a moment, except for the incessant tapping, and Mickey imagined her with a plethora of screens in front of her, accessing data streams and satellite images with a smile on her face. Mickey still couldn't see through the dust, but he had a pretty good idea of what was behind him. He shoved the scope in between two cushions and loaded 4 handguns, shoving them in the cushions so he wouldn’t lose them if the car swerved. He quickly checked to see if the car had a sunroof, which it didn’t, and got back into position, gun in one hand, scope in the other as he waited for Bravo to come back with more information.

A low, disapproving humming signaled her return.

“I have good news and I have bad news.”

Mickey almost growled, the adrenaline starting to kick in as the reality of the situation was dawning on him. He hated bike-on-car shoot-outs.

“Alright, c’mon, hit me.”

“So, I have eyes on you, which is the good news, but the bad news is that I had to go through a number of piggybacks to get it, so I think I have about a 5-second lag. Can you stick your hand out of the window and wave?”

The bizarre request had Mickey stunned for a second, then he kicked back into the driver’s seat and asked him to open his window and wave. About 5 seconds later, she giggled.

“Ah, yes, I can see you! Hiiiii!” she said, and Mickey couldn’t make up his mind on whether to giggle with her or snort, so he stayed quiet instead.

The giggling stopped abruptly with an ‘oh, shit’, followed by a lot of tapping.

“What’s going on?” Mickey couldn’t believe she just ‘oh, shit’-ed him without immediately explaining why, “Bravo, report!”

He peered through the scope again, and he thought he saw something dark moving in the dust storm. At the very least, the dust cloud would impede the motorcycle drivers’ vision a little, but they’d have no trouble keeping track of their movements. A car was also easy enough to hit from close by despite the fact that shooting from a motorcycle was a bitch.

“ _BRAVO!_ ”

“Yeah yeah, I’m here, just give me-”

“What did you see?”

“Oh! Yes, so, you’ve got about 6 bikes coming your way," she informed him calmly. "They look like boosted up dirt bikes but with quite a nice design; light but sturdy, fast, kinda spiffy.” 

Mickey’s eyebrows launched into his hairline at her tone and the random description she offered before checking the positions of his guns again, just to be sure.

“How close are they?”

“About 20 seconds, so 15 for you. They’re driving in a backward V formation. Your dirt is bugging them but it’s not like it’s hard to shoot at a car. Anyway, I’m almost-”

“Is this car bulletproof?” Mickey yelled at the driver, and both he and Bravo snickered.

“Nah mate,” she replied, amusement clear in her voice, “that’s just a rental. Where do you think we’d get the money to have a bulletproof car in every city?”

Mickey groaned as he considered his options. He turned around to look at the road but it was one long, straight road with big fields on either side, occasionally passing by a farm or two and some grazing cows. No side roads, no oncoming cars, no obstacles whatsoever to put between them and the biker gang.

“15 seconds,” he heard Bravo say, “oh, so that’s 10 seconds for you! I think they’re going to try and pass you...”

Mickey abandoned the scope on the rear cover and grabbed a gun, checked to see that the car door was locked so he wouldn’t accidentally fall out, and opened the window. He was just about to lean out when his driver yelled “DOWN”, and on instinct, he crouched down to the seat and clung onto the door with his free hand as the driver slammed the breaks. Mickey could hear at least 3 distinct thuds hit the back of the car as he himself was thrown forward into the driver’s chair and fell into the space between the front seats and the back seats.

“Coulda fuckin’ told me…” he muttered as he struggled to get back up, miraculously still holding onto his gun without having discharged them. Shots rang out and glass showered over him as he crouched back down just in time for the car to speed up and for him to be slammed around once more. The back window shattered as they sped off, showering him with it, and through the open space he could hear motorcycles revving up to follow. Glass cut into his empty hand as he pushed himself off the floor and onto the backseat but he ignored the pain and calmly rested his elbows on the rear cover, his left hand supporting his right as he focussed on the sound of the motorcycles. He loosely held his gun towards the dust storm, waiting for the other person to make a move. A few seconds later, the right backlight exploded, and Mickey returned fire to the location where he had heard the shot come from, but he could hear the motorcycles moving away before he even pulled the trigger. Sometimes, dealing with professionals was really fucking annoying.

He hesitated, briefly wondering if it was a good idea to throw a grenade or two out the window before ignoring that thought considering the speed they were all going. Another shot rang out but it went wide, not hitting the car. Mickey realized a strange sound was coming from the floor, and realized someone was yelling at him from inside the backseat. He almost smiled as he recognized the British accent but suddenly felt very tired from not having slept properly in who knew how long. Ignoring the phone, he grabbed a second gun from the cushions, positioned himself as stable as he could while kneeling backward on the back seat, and spread out his arms so both guns were aimed at the edge of the street. Another shot rang off, this time hitting the trunk, and Mickey adjusted the height of his arms to aim at the level where the shot had come from. He faintly wished he had a semi- or full-automatic in his hands, but ultimately, a bullet was a bullet. So he fired.

Methodically, he simultaneously fired a shot with each gun and moved his arms slightly inward, shooting again, moving inward, rinse and repeat to cover the length of the road where the motorcycles could be. Even if the motorcyclists moved side to side as they had before, the idea was that they’d still have to cross the path of Mickey’s bullets. Mickey thought he heard something, but when his arms were parallel to one another, he repeated the procedure outward, just to be sure. Then he waited. The car sped on, the yelling from his phone continued, but he couldn’t hear the motorcycles anymore. Dead, injured or just given up -- he didn’t care why the motorcycles were no longer following them, as long as they didn’t.

He clicked the safety on the two guns and threw them to the floor, grabbing the other two waiting for him in the cushions and aimed outward again, waiting a good 30 seconds with his fingers on the triggers, listening for a sound to aim at as the wind whipped dust and hair into his face and eyes, the car racing over roads that weren’t meant to be raced on, Mickey’s blood pumping through his veins at a marginally slower speed. He knew he could ask Bravo to check if anyone was following them, but her 5-second delay was a risk he wasn’t willing to take just yet. Once he felt sure, or as sure as he was going to be, that no motorcycle was following them, he relaxed, only the tiniest bit, and the gun slipped out of his left hand and onto the backseat. He slumped sideways and realized that blood was dripping from his hand, a thin stream of red running down his arm, seeping into his clothes. He sighed, resigned and tired as he gazed at the shards of car window lodged into his hand, and pushed the second gun into a cushion where he could easily grab it if necessary before looking for the phone somewhere around the guns and glass. Miraculously, the phone was still intact, and the call was still connected.

“Yello?” Mickey tried, and a mic clicked on on the other side of the line.

“Ah! Davis, you’re still alive, that’s brilliant,” came Bravo’s distracted voice, dry as could be, and he couldn’t tell whether she was upset with him or if it was just her regular British tone of voice. He also didn’t care.

“I think you’re gonna lose the deposit on this rental,” he replied and was awarded with an involuntary snort before Bravo coughed a few times to cover it up.

“Quite, thank you for that--”

“--and you may want to burn it too, my blood is all over the place,” he continued.

“Were you hit?” A spark of concern bled through her voice. Mickey looked at the shards in his hand and suppressed a groan.

“No, just glass in my hand. Where’s the First-Aid kit in this car?”

“Underneath the passenger’s seat, you should be able to reach it from the backseat.”

Mickey took a quick look out the absent back window, and when he couldn’t see or hear anything suspicious, put down the phone and reached underneath the passenger’s seat. He fished out the traditional white First Aid box in a different language and flipped it open, reaching for the gauze just as the car hit a big pothole and everything went flying, bandaids floating out of the windowless doors. An involuntary _fuck_ escaped his mouth before he could bite his tongue in frustration, and it took him a few more seconds to find the gauze again, lying in between glass and guns. He roughly swiped the biggest pieces of glass from his hand and wrapped gauze around the whole thing before grabbing the phone again.

“You still got eyes on us?” he asked, looking around to see if the tweezers survived the bump so he could steal them for later.

Bravo huffed, and Mickey heard something akin to a big fly outside, and another _fuck_ passed his lips as he grabbed a gun and held it to his chest, wondering whether the aerial attack would be coming from the left or the right.

“Do _not_ shoot my drone, Davis!” Bravo yelled through the phone, and Mickey almost threw it out the window, “I need to return this one!”

Mickey really felt like shooting it on principle now.

“What part of ‘advance warning’ did they not teach you in spy school, Bravo?! What the fuck kind of handler are you!”

She snorted.

“Well, my sincere apologies if I’ve been screaming at you for 20 minutes while you did your little shoot-out when I was trying to take care of that for you,” she retorted, keys tapping, and Mickey looked out the window to find three medium-sized drones with eight little propellers flying alongside the car.

“And what had you planned on doing to six guys on motorcycles with unarmed crop duster drones?” he asked while looking at the thing.

“I was going to fly it into their faces, of course,” she replied, her _obviously_ kept silent. Mickey thought about it for a second, and shrugged.

“Yeah, I guess that could have worked.”

“It would have, and I would have if you hadn’t started shooting at my last victims after Francois so kindly disposed of the first three for me.”

Mickey turned to look at the driver in his rearview mirror and mouthed _Francois?_ with a raised eyebrow. The driver looked at him, unimpressed, and shrugged. Bravo’s mic clicked off, and then on again.

“Okay, here are your instructions, if you’re willing to receive them,” she started, and Mickey brought his left hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose until he realised that the gauze was in the way. He dropped his hand. Bravo continued.

“Davis, you’ll be dropped off at a safehouse in the outskirts of the city, because the other one is ehm… indisposed at this moment. We recommend you stay for at least a week, but, really, whatever you do is up to you.”

Mickey could almost hear her shrug of indifference.

“Your phone has been deactivated, and you’ll return this one to Francois. There are basic facilities at the safehouse but nothing that should be able to track you to it. Don’t contact anyone while you’re there. Leave one copy of the signed documents with Francois and it’ll be delivered to us. I’m assuming you have backup documentation with you to get back out of the country?”

Mickey really needed to pinch the bridge of his nose right now.

“You mean I’m going dark.”

Bravo hesitated.

“If it were up to us, we’d prefer you go dark, Davis, but it’s ultimately your choice--”

He had heard that speech before. They cared for their contractors, but only up to the point that you did as they said. They took no responsibility for injury or death if a contractor went against their recommendations.

“--and Budapest is the chief’s territory. We’re going to get in contact with him as soon as we can, because we’re assuming he’s still alive considering that there were multiple cars still at the facility and, honestly, I don’t see a good reason for him to be driving in the same car as a volatile bomb. Anyway, we’ll deal with him, but until such time that he has been dealt with, we believe it’s your best option not to accidentally run into him or his people or his people’s people who know what your face looks like thanks to those security cameras at the facility. We’ve received intel that your picture may already be circulating the airports. So, that is all to say that you can do as we say, or you can do as you please.”

Go dark or be on your own. Holding his hand up to his face, he made a fist and squeezed, grimacing at the pain. He opened up his hand again and stared at the bloody gauze -- too much to properly hold a gun or a knife. He didn’t particularly need two hands to shoot, but having one hand incapacitated wasn’t an ideal situation when you had some fanatic coming after you with his crew.

“Davis, do you confirm the receipt of these instructions?”

Always with the fucking contracts and confirmations. Sometimes it felt like the organization was run by lawyers. For a fucking undercover spy organization, they had a lot of legal work going on. At the very least the document signed by the chief proved that the bomb had been made to request and delivered satisfactorily, so the agency would have an easier time discussing the particulars with the chief, and there’d be no discussion regarding his payment, though he’d be footing his own bill for the costs of the safehouse.

“I confirm,” Mickey sighed, and a bump in the road had him put his hand out to keep his balance, smacking it straight into his remaining gun, pain shooting through his hand up to his arm, and he softly hissed in pain as he retracted his hand into his lap.

“Do you confirm that you’ll be making use of the safehouse as will be provided to you for the next 7 days, starting today.”

He suppressed his sigh.

“I confirm.”

“Great! You will be dropped off at the safehouse in about 3 hours. Please hand over the signed documents as soon as possible and leave behind the guns. Your phone will be reactivated in exactly 7 days. It was a pleasure doing business with you.”

“Bravo, wait--” Mickey hesitated, not knowing whether to ask something of her or to leave things as they were.

“Yes, Davis?” She sounded curious.

“You already deactivated my phone so could you send a text message to my associate for me.”

“I can request permission to do so, yes. What’s the message?”

Mickey sometimes really regretted working with an agency as opposed to being able to do his own shit in his own time without people deactivating his equipment from afar. On the other hand, they made getting contracts and _not_ dealing directly with clients so much easier, and he hadn’t had to deal with banks and money-related paperwork for years...

“Just send her ‘good night, will see you soon’.”

“Any particular capitalization?”

“No, just the text.”

“Please confirm the name of your associate.”

“Amanda Miller.”

_Tap tap tap._

“Alright, I sent off the request,” Bravo confirmed, “and it’s not unreasonable request, so I don’t see why they wouldn’t allow it…” she continued under her breath. “Anything else, Davis?”

“No, that was all.”

“In that case, I bid you adieu and I wish you a good week to come.”

“Is there at least beer in this safehouse?” Mickey tried before she hung up on him.

“Have a good day, Davis,” he heard Bravo reply, a smile coming through the line before it clicked off.

Two and a half hours and a smoggy sunset later, Mickey and his overnight bag (but sans a bag of tools and one copy of signed documents) were standing in the doorway of a small, dusty one-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a dodgy-looking apartment building in the middle of Budapest, right on top of a bakery. He closed and locked the door, taking out his gun before checking the bedroom and bathroom, touching around the window frames and opening the windows to check his emergency escapes. He resecured the windows and opened the fridge to find seven big bottles of water, but no beer. One last sweep for bugs and other recording devices came up empty, and Mickey finally relaxed a little. He trusted his agency to a certain extent, but everyone could make stupid mistakes and he wasn’t about to be murdered because of it. As he sat on the bed, he wondered if he should put a small explosive contraption to the front door from the bits and pieces of material and chemicals he smuggled with him from the chief’s stash. He also wondered if he could steal some wifi from neighbouring shops as his body slowly went horizontal. He wondered if Bravo had sent his message to Mandy as he blinked. He wondered nothing else as his eyes didn’t open for another 18 hours.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With many thanks to my alpha and beta.


	3. Ex-Caliber

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mikhailo's train of thought faltered and his brain stopped functioning when the man carefully tucked a loose-hanging strand of his hair behind his ear, brown eyes trained on blue ones to gauge their reaction as he did. The man smirked and stroked Mikhailo’s neck with his thumb as he leaned closer, holding his head in place as he pressed their lips together again, tenderly, slow enough that Mikhailo’s eyes fluttered shut against his will. Mikhailo had almost melted into the kiss when he felt cold metal slicing through a layer of his abdominal skin, and his eyes flew open. For a split second, he froze, unable to look away from the man's cold brown eyes, betrayal and shame making his body flash hot and cold at the same time. The feeling of blood dripping from his fingers shocked him into action.

After his body forced him to catch up on sleep, Mickey belatedly cleared his hand of the tiny pieces of glass. The subsequent bleeding wasn’t too bad, and he took a few painkillers and what looked like it could be antibiotics from the medical kit he found in the apartment as a precaution. He then spent the next 20 minutes trying to turn on his phone in case there was any manual way of undoing what Bravo had done to it (there wasn’t).

Two tours of the small kitchen yielded no more than the 14 cans he displayed on the kitchen counter of which half were beans or corned beef, one looked like a pudding-like substance and the others were of unknown origin. Mickey chose a can of beans at random, eating its content without really tasting it while the smell of freshly baked bread and pastries coming in through cracks in the old wooden windowsills made his stomach growl, his head slowly feeling faint. He prowled around as he ate, muttering to himself that the Agency could at least try to keep their contractors alive by providing them with more than beans and corned beef before deciding to take a quick shower.

Despite the beans, his stomach practically roared as he toweled off and dressed in the cleanest and least wrinkled clothes he had left, fitting the gun into the space between his jeans and his lower back before draping the back of his shirt on it and putting on a light jacket to further cover it. He put on a baseball cap and rummaged through his bag to find his stash of Hungarian money, carefully counting out 10,000 forints, the equivalent of about $35, before returning the rest to his bag; flashing around too much cash generally caused trouble and Mickey couldn’t afford to draw any attention to himself. He made the bed and hid his bag in the back of the empty closet, placing the empty water bottle behind the other 6 to make the apartment look as uninhabited as it had been when he walked in. A quick check of the windows showed that everything was still as it had previously been, and Mickey spent a minute with his ear to the door to gauge the afternoon noises on the hallway.

When nothing out of the ordinary seemed to happen, he slowly opened the door and stepped outside. He turned around in a slow circle, scanning the floor, the walls, the doors, the ceiling -- any part of the hallway for any type of clue, but he found nothing. Before closing the door, he leaned down and pretended to fix his shoelaces, resting one hand right next to the lowest door hinge. He placed a thin piece of plastic between the hinge and the door and fiddled with his shoe for another second before getting up and closing the door. He waited another moment while brushing invisible lint off his jacket to check out the other side of the hallway, and when nothing happened, he locked the door and walked to the staircase. The moment he opened the ground floor door to the street, a blast of air smelling like freshly baked bread hit him like a brick, and it took almost too much effort for Mickey to walk the other way, away from the bakery and their heavenly smells in order to do a quick check around the block for anything suspicious or out of the ordinary. Not that he knew what ordinary looked like in the outskirts of Budapest.

Having done his rounds and taken all safety precautions he could think of short of placing cameras everywhere, he found his way back to the bakery, his mouth already salivating at the thought of real food. A bell above the door softly chimed as he walked in and moved to stand in line, carefully watching the group of four sitting in the small seating area of the bakery, the two young women working behind the counter, the man and a young girl in line with him, the door leading to the kitchen and ovens, the noises coming from the kitchen, the utter lack of cameras or advanced security equipment.

The place looked homey, warm, old but refined like the dark wooden display mixed with the cold stainless steel of the modern espresso machines placed on a counter in the back and the two cash registers side by side on the vintage counter. Soft pop music played overhead and the group in the seating area were talking amongst themselves, sitting next to a small bookcase filled to the brim with books and magazines. He memorized the names spelled out on the badges that the two women working behind the counter were wearing, Amira and Zsófia, so he could act more familiar with them, and then briefly panicked at the utter lack of usage of the English language until he realized that the girl in front of him was reading an English book.

Her phone was sticking out of the back of her messenger bag, and Mickey’s fingers itched, his boredom and the need to know what was going on in the world (and with one particular redhead) already counting down the seconds until he could get his hands on it. A chirp came from the phone and she blindly grabbed it, swiping a small N on the lock screen before opening the message she received. Mickey followed her movements, noting her password and that her phone’s settings were in English. She closed the message and went back to her home screen, and while peeking over her shoulder, Mickey saw the picture of a young girl in a hospital bed smiling at the camera, tubes going into her arms and nose, her head bald, dark circles underneath her tired-looking eyes.

Mickey suppressed a groan, wondering when the hell he had gone so soft as he dismissed his plan to steal the girl’s phone. The line moved and the girl in front of him walked up to the cash register, smiling and chatting with Amira in a mix of Hungarian and English like she was a frequent customer. She paid and moved to the side, accepting her coffee and waiting for Amira to finish bagging the rest of her order. It was Mickey’s turn and as he walked to the right cash register, Zsófia said something that sounded suspiciously like how he thought ‘how can I help you’ would sound like in Hungarian.

“Hi eh… could I have a ehm… filtered coffee, a loaf of whole wheat bread and three of your favorite pastries?”

“Small or large?” she asked, her English tinted with a slight Hungarian accent, and Mickey’s stomach growled into the silence, making her smirk slightly before she visibly suppressed it.

“Large, please.”

“Would you like the bread cut?”

“Yes.”

She nodded and set to work, placing a loaf of dark bread into the bread cutter before pouring a large cup of coffee as the cutter did its work. She placed the coffee on the counter and moved back to put the bread into a paper bag, placing it next to the cup. Mickey looked around the bakery some more as she did her thing, noting that the group of four were getting ready to leave. His stomach growled again as the heavenly smell of freshly baked bread coming from the back of the bakery was trying to persuade his brain to jump over the counter and devour the first loaf he could get his hands on.

“What pastries do you want?” Zsófia interrupted his mental reverie.

“Whichever you like most,” he replied with a smile, hoping it didn’t sound _too_ flirty.

She frowned at his strange request as she walked to the glass display, looking inside before peaking out over the top to look at Mickey.

“Chocolate or raisins?”

Mickey made a face.

“Always chocolate.”

She smirked before putting something that looked like a cinnamon bun, something else that looked like a less flaky version of a croissant and a bunch of small cookies into a small box, then peaked out over the top again.

“Custard?”

Mickey nodded, and Zsófia scanned the pastries again, taking her time to contemplate what else was to disappear into the box.

The doorbell chimed softly as the group of four walked out of the bakery, but Mickey saw Zsófia grimace right before an obnoxiously loud laugh cut through the serenity of the small bakery. Zsófia wiped the expression off her face, and Mickey looked at the faint reflection in the glass display to check out the man that had walked into the bakery, loudly talking on his Bluetooth headset in what Mickey assumed was Hungarian. The man was dressed in an expensive-looking suit, holding a large, black leather briefcase and clearly feeling extremely important. Amira had walked up to the cash register with a smile, but before she could greet him, he said something in a commanding voice and waved nonchalantly at the espresso machines before smacking his briefcase onto the counter to take out his wallet, leaving the briefcase flap open and the content visible. Her smile turned a little colder when the man turned away from her, walking a few steps into the shop to continue his loud conversation.

Amira turned towards the espresso machines with a sigh and Mickey stepped closer to the counter, peering into the briefcase, almost sighing with happiness when he saw the top of a black protective pouch that looked too big for a laptop but too small for a phone. The man’s voice was still a few steps away, projected towards the front door and Zsófia looked very focussed as she was stuffing the tiny box with more pastries than it could handle. In one smooth move, Mickey sidestepped to the left as Amira violently smacked the old coffee beans out of the basket. He lifted the pouch from the briefcase with his left hand and tucked it into one of the many inner pockets of his modified jacket as he moved back to the right cash register, taking out his wallet from another pocket with the same hand, casually waiting. Amira clicked the basket into place and put a cup underneath the spout, pressing a few buttons before the machine gurgled black water into the cup.

Zsófia reappeared, scanning the display before nodding to herself, clearly satisfied with the damage she had done. She wrapped a string around the bulging pastry box, and Mickey couldn’t help but lift an amused eyebrow at the poor box. Smiling deviously, she shrugged as she rang up the order.

“I like a lot of pastries the most,” she said, a slight tease in her voice as she placed the box and bread into a bag, and Mickey pinched his nose to keep himself from laughing out loud.

Amira sidled up to the cash register next to her with a small coffee cup and a sour expression on her face, trying to politely catch the man’s attention as she rang up his drink. Mickey handed over enough cash to cover his order, dropping the change in what he hoped was the tip cup and not just someone’s trash.

“Have a nice day,” Zsófia smiled at him as she handed over his bag and cup.

“Köszönöm,” Mickey replied, hoping he hadn’t completely botched the pronunciation. Zsófia’s smile turned from professional-nice to genuinely beautiful, and he suddenly missed Mandy for no good reason at all. He smiled back at her and Amira before walking around the loud man and out of the front door, the soft doorbell chiming its goodbye at him.

Despite the urge to tear into the box of pastries, he turned into the opposite direction of the front door to the apartment, doing another cursory look around the block. As he walked to the building’s entrance, he made sure the loud man wasn’t anywhere in sight before cautiously unlocking the ground floor door, climbing the stairs, checking if the piece of plastic was still stuck between the hinge and the door, and unlocking it. He forced himself to lock the door and stand there in silence for a few seconds to make sure no sounds were out of place before placing the cup of coffee and bag of food on the counter and fishing the pouch from his jacket pocket.

He quickly opened the pouch, smirking as he pulled a tablet out of its protective casing, digging through the pouch to find its charger cable as well. Turning on the tablet, he guessed the swipe on the lock screen to be a big Z in 3 tries and flicked through the settings until he found the language option. After switching the tablet to English, he took a sip of his coffee and pulled his overnight bag out of the back of the closet, rummaging around until he found his USB stick and a connector cable. As the USB stick transferred and installed a tracking blocker program on the tablet, he took the bread and pastry box out of the bag, slowly undoing the strings of the box like he was undressing somebody; careful but full of anticipation. One particular redhead came to mind.

Flipping open the top of the pastry box, Mickey could no longer suppress his laugh at the sight of too many pastries smushed into a single box. Most pastries had survived the packing and transportation quite well, except for some flaky custard-filled tart which Mickey shoved into his mouth whole. His smile turned into a moan, eyes rolling back in their sockets in pleasure, and it was all he could do not to walk back downstairs and ask Zsófia to marry him. He took out a plate and carefully arranged the pastries on it, secretly disappointed that there wasn’t another custard-filled tart in the bunch, knowing full well that he’d probably go back to the bakery the following day to get more.

He alternated between sipping coffee, trying to decide the order in which to eat the pastries and checking the tablet’s progress. 15 minutes later, the coffee was gone, along with 2 pastries and a few cookies, and the tablet was untraceable and leeching off someone’s wifi. Even though he knew the blocker program was mostly infallible, Mickey refrained from logging into his personal emails and accounts in case the chief had someone on his payroll that was better at hacking than the person who had made his blocker program was at blocking. It would be severely stupid to get killed over checking emails.

So instead, Mickey went to the website of the NYC Sustainable Investment Conference, searching for the speaker and attendee list. He tried to remember if the redhead had been wearing a speaker or attendee badge and came up blank, resorting to opening every single one of the 395 available profiles individually. Dismissing 79 profiles for being women and 184 for being older men, he sifted through the remaining 132 profiles, carefully reading through the profiles that hadn’t bothered to upload a picture or link it to their LinkedIn to gauge if anything felt like it could belong to the redhead. In the end, he was left with 4 profiles: 4 potential people that sounded like they could be young, intelligent and fucking fiery.

That’s when he realized a number of things: 1) it was already dark outside, 2) he had eaten all but 2 of the pastries and couldn’t remember when he had done that, and 3) he really needed to piss.

As he walked to the bathroom, fatigue hit him like a freight train. A yawn raked through his body, making his eyes tear up and shutting down most of his brain functions. His eyes threatened to flutter shut as he pissed, and when another yawn almost dislocated his jaw when he was washing his hands, he decided that sleep could be beneficial to his overall health. Stripping off his clothes, he hung them neatly over a chair so they would hopefully still be presentable the next day before brushing his teeth and splashing his face with water. He yawned again as he shut down the tablet and checked the door and windows. He stood by the door for a minute, his ear to the wood as he listened for any strange sounds, just in case, but none came. Slowly, he shuffled off to bed, collapsing face-first on the dingy mattress with a soft sigh. After turning a few times, Mickey fell into a light sleep, the blanket loosely draped over his lower body, hand underneath his pillow, fingertips resting on the gun he always held there. His dreams were filled with custard pastries, redheads, and blood.

 

* * *

 

Mickey only managed to stay put for approximately 74 hours.

Between the limitations to his freedom of movement and the obsessive need to find out more (or _any_ ) information on the redhead while hyped up on large cups of coffee and too many custard pastries, Mickey was going completely and utterly fucking _nuts_. He had tried 8 different variations of coffee, and every single custard pastry the bakery provided at least twice. He had read every single article there was to find on the death of the Colombian drug lord's son, which turned out to be exactly 2 short articles because no one really seemed to care about the annoying brat, and neither article mentioned foul play. He refrained from hacking into the NYPD database to gather more information. He did, however, figure out 6 different routes to get back to New York through different countries surrounding Hungary, and was pretty much ready to face whatever risk there was to get back home. Most importantly, he had gone through all available conference profiles 3 times, followed by searching Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for mentions and pictures tagged at the event, and he still hadn’t been able to find the redhead.

Getting himself off to the memory of the redhead had unfortunately not helped matters, and frustration didn’t begin to cover how he felt; he was going out of his fucking _mind_ , and it was only 8 pm.

By 9 pm, Mickey was sitting on a dingy bus to Budapest, the chief’s main territory, in order to get on a train to Austria where he would get on the first flight he could find to New York. His jacket pockets were stuffed with money, his second passport, a switchblade, and the tablet, whereas his meager belongings, the remaining bottles of water and the leftover slices of bread were packed into his overnight bag. He knew Mandy was going to tease him for mourning the loss of his beloved custard pastries, but he vowed to look for a Hungarian bakery in NYC, wishing he had been able to take a picture of the name of the pastry he liked so much. He desperately hoped the pastry wasn’t a regional specialty.

As they neared the Budapest Keleti railway station, his usual amount of paranoia set into his muscles, tensing up his neck just slightly. He wished he had thought to bring color contacts or a hat as he walked around as inconspicuously as possible, taking only a moment to appreciate the beautiful architecture and giant half-moon window of the station, and the feeling of freedom as he was absorbed in the crowd of tourists and locals alike. Two children ran in front of him, screaming at one another in French, and it was all Mickey could do not to accidentally trip one for the fun of it as he walked into the first gift shop he could find. Wandering slowly around the store to make sure he wasn’t being followed, he bought a dark grey hoodie two sizes too large and put it on over his jacket. Then, after using what little German he could still remember to buy the right train ticket to Vienna Central, he wandered around the train station in search of food, and troublesome and suspicious behavior.

The problem with train stations was mainly that there was _always_ suspicious behavior; it was both a meeting place for the common folk and the workplace for those on the darker side of the spectrum. In the 5 minutes that Mickey walked around, he spotted at least 2 separate child gangs and pickpockets, a couple of prostitutes and one particularly obvious stalker, which in hindsight turned out to be someone’s boyfriend. His hands were itching to see if he could pickpocket the little group’s latest victim faster than them but he didn’t know for sure whether petty local crime was included within the chief’s range of influence so he just watched the group skillfully lift the woman’s wallet, even as a couple of policemen walked by.

No one looked at him funny, no one asked him for the time, no one even tried to check him out, and though he couldn’t shake the feeling of someone staring at him from outside his peripheral vision, he knew the chance was exceptionally small for anything fatal to happen. Still, 10 minutes before his train was due to depart, Mickey stood up and dusted himself off as he looked around. He grabbed his bag and started walking toward the platform next to the one his train would be leaving from, strolling casually as he checked any reflective material for someone following him. When he almost reached the stairs to the platform, he bent down to tie his shoelaces in front of the glass window of a shop. A few meters behind him, two young, scrawny boys of maybe 10 years old stopped as well, one sharply elbowing the other in the ribs as he pointed his chin at Mickey, and Mickey sighed at the efficiency of using children as spotters in gangs. The elbowed boy ran off, most likely to find an adult that was better equipped at handling Mickey, and the other kept following him at a distance, though his subtlety needed some work.

Mickey went down the stairs, quickly but still seemingly relaxed, stopping immediately around the corner and dropping his bag on the floor next to him. Looking around, he found two tourists on the far side of the opposite platform and a monitor telling him that the train’s arrival wouldn’t be for another 45 minutes, so the chance of innocent bystanders getting caught up in his mess was pretty minimal. He could see a few benches built into the walls of the platform, deep enough to hide a child’s body if necessary, and his first plan was solidified. Calculating the distance between his platform and the next as a backup plan, he looked down at the tracks, praying that he wouldn’t have to jump onto the filth below. He took out his switchblade before stripping off his hoodie and jacket, dumping them on his bag at the same time as he heard light footsteps coming down the steps.

The moment the boy rounded the corner, Mickey took a split second to identify him as the same kid that had pointed him out earlier before grabbing him by the hair and pinning him between the wall and his body, the switchblade’s edge softly digging into the child’s neck. Mickey lifted the kid’s head by his hair, looking him in the eyes and raising his eyebrows in the universal meaning of “you know what this knife to your throat means”. The kid raised an eyebrow himself, not even remotely impressed by Mickey’s antics, but he didn’t move, didn’t try to scream. Mickey waited a few more seconds to listen for more footsteps coming down the stairs and when none came, he turned the kid sideways and practically dragged him to the benches with one hand holding the kid’s neck, the other keeping the switchblade in front of his own body so the boy couldn’t disarm him.

Having reached the benches, Mickey forced the boy to stand on the bench, facing the wall and bringing him to approximately the same height as him. He snaked his arm around the child’s neck and brought it around to grab the back of his own to lock the position, then smacked the back of the kid’s knees so they'd bend. The kid effectively fell into Mickey’s choke hold, choking himself by his weight dropping his neck into the crook of Mickey’s elbow and blocking the flow of oxygen to his brain and body. Because of the boy’s scrawny body, it didn’t take more than 10 seconds for the child to stop weakly struggling as the lack of oxygen in his brain forced his body to shut down in order to survive. Once Mickey was sure that the child was unconscious, he let go of the choke hold, catching the boy’s limp body and seating him on the bench as if he were asleep, head resting against the wall. He then turned around and casually strode back towards the stairs, grabbing his bag, hoodie, and jacket in passing.

As he was halfway up the stairs, three burly men came barging around the corner, looking far too excited with grins on their faces as if a big payday was close. Trusting that the men were going after the other kid’s description of his previous outfit, Mickey kept his eyes cast down as he continued climbing the stairs at a normal pace, digging into his pocket with one hand for the money stash he kept there. He got to the top of the stairs as the men reached the platform, and he could hear them yell something in Hungarian, their voices growing distant as they ran down the platform, away from the stairs and probably towards the unconscious boy.

Mickey kept walking towards the next platform and the train he was supposed to get on. Too many people seemed to be staring at him, aware that something was going on but maybe not exactly what. A small group of kids was standing together, their clothes dirty and the look in their eyes hard, waiting for orders or a new victim, and Mickey finally managed to pull out a bunch of random bills from his pocket. He flung the money on the floor in front of the kids, and after a moment of confusion, the children practically tripped over each other trying to snatch a bill before running away with it in different directions in order to make chasing them more difficult. But Mickey had already disappeared in the commotion, hurrying down the stairs of the next platform and into the train, walking through the crowded cars all the way to the front of the train until he found the business class section and his seat number.

He smiled thinly at the car’s attendant and showed her his ticket before falling into his chair, flinging his bag onto his lap. The attendant asked him something, and Mickey replied in German, to which she smiled apologetically and gave him a picture menu instead. The intercom crackled and someone rattled off information in Hungarian in a monotone and bored voice, but Mickey had managed to catch the words “Vienna Central” and sighed in relief. As the train started moving, he relaxed minutely into his chair, knowing that the risk of being caught in the chief’s territory had mostly passed. He didn’t feel guilty about choking out the kid because the alternative was either of their deaths and this way the kid could not be punished for not having tried to stop him, though he wished he had taken the time to check for a pulse. But after two beers and some random overpriced sandwiches, his thoughts of child gangs and dead siblings were lulled into a muddy blur by the soothing rhythmic sound of the train.

 

* * *

 

40 hours later, Mickey grimaced as he pressed his thumb to the fingerprint scanner. He struggled a bit with the key, impatience no longer repressible, and was suspiciously close to losing his shit when the key smoothly slid into the lock. The door swung open, he walked in, the door swung shut and locked itself, and he dropped his bag with a sigh. He waited for his sister to yell out at him but all he could hear was the shower running and Mandy’s usual playlist of ridiculously loud 'shower rock music' she played when she was in a particularly good mood and in the shower. That _also_ generally meant that she was going out or getting laid, which in turn meant that Mickey’s grand idea of ordering in pizza, bitching about the project and the mystery man while drinking vodka was most likely going to be a solo job.

He kicked off his shoes, wondering if burning them would make them smell any better, and walked over to Mandy’s dark blue couch while trying to shake his jacket off. The jacket sleeve got stuck somehow, causing Mickey to flail his arms like a chicken in an attempt to get the jacket off, resulting in only one freed arm. The unwilling jacket threw off his aim for the couch, and Mickey half-fell onto the cushions, face-first and superman-style with his arms stretched out behind his back. Mandy’s music drowned out his soft whine of annoyance as he tried to take the other sleeve off until some vigorous shaking took care of his problem. He tossed the treacherous piece of clothing away and groaned as the cushions welcomed him into their realm of soft squishy wonderfulness, their familiarity evoking a sense of peace he occasionally enjoyed.

He longingly gazed at Mandy’s liquor cabinet on the other side of the room, stretching out his arm in a feeble attempt to use the Force. When nothing moved, he dropped his arm, deciding that alcohol was seriously overrated if it didn’t come with a voice-activated butler robot. He leaned back instead and put his feet on Mandy’s coffee table, accidentally kicking something aside as he did. Cracking one eye open, he spotted the half-eaten baggie of M&Ms on her coffee table. He snickered, the candy bringing back a flood of childhood memories, both good and bad, the harsh reality that had shaped them both into the people they presently were.

With his body powering down and slowly melting into the couch, his brain booted back up, nagging at him about the last-minute nature of his project as well as the job they were made to rush. It made him feel like they were the last ones on the Agency’s long list of contractors to be contacted for some reason. Something was up, and he hoped the difficulties of their last few missions hadn’t impacted their success rate to the point of being dropped to the bottom of the Agency’s food chain.

Back in the olden days, a potential client would have to find their contractors through word-of-mouth and a bunch of shady people. Those contractors would then personally handle all parts of the business with their clients and receive the large manila envelopes with stacks of money without the use of or need for a middleman or agency. But those times had mostly passed, and though the nature of the black market industry Mickey and Mandy thrived in still functioned in a way that contractors would rather not work together, resource-pooling agencies had popped up to represent them en-groupe.

Clients wanted a one-stop-shop for their blackmail, extortion, smuggling, theft, forgery, and assassinations, and they wanted it at the best price. As a consequence, agencies had lists and profiles of several contractors with a great variety of skill sets that could pull off any small, medium, large or impossible job, individually or in certain predetermined combinations, while taking an administrative fee off the top and a handling fee off the bottom. They could provide back-up, intel, equipment, and many other services to their contractors as well, at a reduced price of course, and had proven to produce a steady record of successful missions due to the interlinking of intel, services, and activities.

Given their background, Mickey and Mandy had been working with Agencies ever since they started working contracts outside their Institute, which helped keep their anonymity firmly in place by almost never having to deal with clients personally, and only if absolutely necessary by using one of their several codenames. Agents were expensive, and good agents were ridiculously hard to come by, but thanks to their previous Mistress, Mickey and Mandy had been working with Il Mago, a very old and well-reputed family-owned Agency in Europe. They stayed loyal to the Mago matriarch, a former wetwork specialist from Sicily, until she died of old age and none of her children had wanted to take over the family business. A natural death was a luxury not many in the industry could afford, but the Mago family was held in high regard by many. Her funeral felt like a B-grade spy movie with the amount of makeup, wigs, sunglasses, non-descriptive cars and other un-identifying features needed for her contractors to maintain their anonymity while still paying their respects. Despite the circumstances, it was hilarious to see the outside people react to the tension building up in small spaces while mafia bosses and high-ranking government officials from several countries exchanged pleasantries as the corporate spies and assassins tried to flit in and out of the funeral unseen.

After Il Mago’s death, the siblings were suddenly without any fixed Agency or contracts and decided to travel the globe, to truly enjoy their riches and their freedom. They settled down in the Asia-Pacific region for a while until circumstances beyond their control made it so that they were forcefully uprooted again. After making the necessary preparations, they landed in California, moving across the country and working the odd contract before they acquired an interview with the Olympus Recruitment Agency, the paper company which fronted one of the Agency branches within a much larger international umbrella conglomerate.

Olympus came highly recommended and was as good at keeping its contractors secret as it was its own employees. No one knew how many people truly worked for the Agency, and Mickey and Mandy had only physically met two handlers in their 5 years with them, along with a handful of technical staff and minions over the phone. They received their equipment and communications through several commonly encrypted or ridiculously convoluted channels, the sing-o-gram being one of Mandy’s favorites. There was no office where they could ‘drop in’; Mickey had no idea where the company or their handlers were physically located, and he had only ever heard of one team being called to ‘headquarters’ and never coming back out. On the very few occasions that they would need to meet someone face-to-face, there would be a very convenient taxi picking them up and bringing them to some reclusive, random location that had been scrubbed clean and prepped for the occasion.

The whole industry had a very obvious and understandable unspoken don’t-ask-don’t-get-killed-or-tell rule, considering the amount of anonymity most contractors and practically all clients wanted to retain. However, in order to be a contractor for their Agency, Mickey and Mandy had been required to lay down a lot of details of their lives and professional history, their unique skills, previous jobs, enemies within the industry, people or associations they did not want to associate with, personal references and the like. It was like an extended dating profile but for assassins. The Agency held databases full of information on their contractors, each depicting (part of) their history, unique skill sets, success average, rates, geographical disposition, languages spoken; all the information necessary to pick the right contractor for the right job. The Agency also vetted their clients and projects in a similar, if slightly less scrupulous, manner, and all money-related manners flowed through the Agency into a plethora of offshore accounts, shell companies, and tax havens in order to end up into the bank account or hands of their contractors.

Naturally, the Agency did absolutely nothing out of the goodness of their heart; business was business, and more than a few contractors had been terminated by their own agency upon violating their agreements. Their Agency’s contractor branch was headed by a lawyer, which bled through the practice of the entire Agency, and the first thing a new contractor got to do was review a simple 5-page document that stipulated the rules and regulations upon which their relationship with the Agency would be based. Obviously, a breach of contract wouldn’t be brought before a formal court, but there was an initial Mitigation Procedure that would be followed where the parties would come together and present their case to an impartial arbitrator who would try to resolve the dispute. If that didn’t work out, damages could be compensated left and right and the contractor’s contract could be suspended or terminated. In the worst case scenarios, the contractor would be found with their head chopped off in an undisclosed location for someone to find as a message to other contractors on how _not_ to do business with the Agency.

But good contractors were hard to find and a well organized Agency was equally difficult to get accepted by, so a clean and balanced relationship was mutually beneficial. The Agency was well aware of their reputation’s value in the industry, both amongst contractors and clients, and this kept the power balance between the Agency and contractors within a healthy margin. Mickey and Mandy had always worked well within the respectful authority of an Agency while doing their own thing on the side, which was both approved of and encouraged so contractors continued to build their skills as long as it didn’t interfere with their minimum contractual obligations.

Mickey and Mandy together were a unique commodity, not so much for their combined skills as for the reputation they had somehow managed to build up. Back in their teenage years, when they were still Mikhailo and Myla Milkovich from Ukraine, they had excelled in their training and education and fulfilled enough hours as body clean up crews for their Mistress to allow them to perform minor contract killing jobs in Europe. The first few jobs had gone off very cleanly, but at the fourth job, a young Myla had somehow managed to drop a baggie of M&Ms near the victim’s body after checking to make sure he was dead. The baggie didn’t have any fingerprints, but after the story ran in the news and it turned out that the victim was single, friendless and lactose intolerant. It was therefore concluded that the M&Ms were most likely not the victim’s and the media creatively dubbed the killer “the M&M Murderer”. The partial boot indent Myla had left at the scene of the crime had been correctly interpreted as a woman’s shoe, but the investigation stalled soon after because Mikhailo’s way of killing, even back then, was both highly efficient and untraceable. When Mikhailo and Myla had come back to their headquarters, the news had already traveled back home and Myla had been dubbed M&M.

Their Mistress hadn’t been in the slightest bit amused by their dumb mistakes, but if Maria was good at something, it was bending a bad situation to her advantage. She had raised scores of orphans for the purpose of the industry and she knew that these two Milkoviches would be going far in the business if they survived another 5 years. However, in order for them to pay off their life contracts to her, they needed to do more than survive; they needed to earn money. The easiest way to earn money in the contract killing business was to get either a good reputation or an intriguing reputation, and the M&M calling card used by an unfamiliar single woman assassin apparently had people talking, so Maria ran with it.

Maria was one of five Lieutenant Generals within a large organization named the Institute that used orphanages to provide several sectors within Ukraine and Eastern Europe with cheap labor, child prostitutes, or military specialists. New groups of young children were educated in languages, science, and hand-to-hand combat, and then rigorously tested to weed out the less equipped from the smart or ruthless. The slow boys were transferred to manual labor and the sweet girls to prostitution, the rest remained within the Institute and moved around the sections based on their ranking.

Though her real name was unknown, she was known to the underworld as Mistress Maria, rumoured to have defected from the Ukrainian Army and burned down all buildings with personnel files in them so no one could figure out who she was. She headed the military division, picking and training those children whom she thought could be used within the military, espionage or assassination sections. Every year, she would pick a new influx of children of all ages from several orphanages that then received basic weaponry and hand-to-hand training before being put through a kill-or-die test called the elimination round. Those that survived went through to the next round of training and education, and so on. Loyalty to her was preached above all, and stepping out of line meant losing the toes that had gone too far. Superior skills with weapons were commended as long as they came with a savvy mind and quick feet. Teamwork was encouraged but during each elimination round, it was the individual that would survive.

In the stress and confusion of their first elimination round, Maria didn’t tell the children that the kids that had been shot weren’t actually dead but only heavily sedated. Maria didn’t like wasting perfectly good resources, so the first elimination round decided which kids were strong or ruthless enough to stay within the Institute and which would be moved to the cheap labor or prostitution sectors. Once a kid had been selected, the subsequent rounds would change their ranking or have them transferred to a different military section or another sector depending on the rest of their profile and class scores. The kids that died during hand-to-hand combat or knife fights were an unfortunate risk she had to take.

After their father’s untimely demise, the 5 Milkovich children were split up and placed in different orphanages and foster homes. Mikhailo and Myla were placed in one of the Institute’s orphanages and eventually selected by Maria. However, as it was the Institute’s policy to split up siblings, it took 2 years before Mikhailo would stand face to face with Myla again. At 11 years old, he was at the top of the rankings within his section, brutal and brilliant, as lethal with a sniper rifle in his hand as he was when arguing politics. A few snipers from his section were meant to assist in the supervision of the latest elimination rounds of a different section, using tranquilizer guns to pick off those kids that weren’t shielding themselves well enough within the abandoned factory. What they didn’t know was that those children had been informed that the snipers were fair game as well.

During the rounds, Mikhailo easily picked off 7 children within the first 3 minutes, lazily gazing through his scope from up high until he found another that wasn’t properly protected. He shot them down and carried on, feeling like a God amongst men with his precious sniper rifle. That was until he was rudely interrupted by a kick in the back and a gun pointed at his neck. Unlike most of the other children in her year, Myla hadn’t stormed off to try and eliminate as many of her classmates as possible. Instead, she had gone looking to remove the threat that came from above, the one that was hardest to predict and manage when running around on the ground. She had waited for a sniper to pick off someone so she could gauge their location, moving closer with each shot from the rifle. She furthermore reasoned that once she had eliminated the sniper, she could use the rifle for the round’s main purpose -- eliminating her classmates and improving her ranking.

With her gun pointed at Mikhailo’s face, the 9-year-old Myla looked her big brother up and down before turning her gun to the side and shooting her main rival that had managed to follow her up the stairs. When she turned back, Mikhailo had his backup gun pointed at her chest, sweat breaking out on his face as he realized he was truly looking at his little sister. Myla raised her hands as Mikhailo slowly got up, but she didn’t let go of the gun, didn’t stop analyzing her peripheral vision for other threats. She smiled at him as he stared at her, and it took another moment before Mikhailo let out the breath he’d been holding and ran forward to hug his sister. After they had been separated, he had made peace with the idea that he would never see her again, that she had probably been placed in the infamous prostitution section, and that he would probably die in an elimination round before he could figure out a way to find her. Fortunately, Myla had managed to outfight almost all of her classmates within the first elimination round because of her experience living with 4 older and bigger brothers and an abusive father and had proven to be a serious threat with knives and a handgun thereafter.

Once reunited, the siblings refused to be separated again. After the elimination rounds had ended and the two sections were getting ready to go back to their separate locations, they fought their way out of the warehouse, tranquilizing a number of trainers and coaches until the head coach pulled out a gun loaded with bullets and fired off a warning shot into the air. Both clearly understood the risk of continuing their riot so instead of going down swinging, they decided to surrender. They were cuffed and taken away in separate cars, placed in holding cells until Maria could make a judgment call on the rather unusual situation that had presented itself. She had been following both Mikhailo and Myla’s paths very closely as they were at the top of their respective sections and good candidates for her advanced programs, but Milkovich was a common enough last name in their region and her files had lacked the crucial piece of information indicating that these two Milkoviches were siblings. A single sibling rivalry has once wiped out almost an entire section and an excellent training facility in the science department, and she had since been cautious to keep family members apart. After dealing with her section heads for missing that critical detail, she had both kids put in the same room to see what they would do.

Within 3 minutes and only minimum communication, Myla had uncuffed herself and Mikhailo, they had figured out where the camera was positioned and were very close to unscrewing part of a vent that could lead them out of the room. Maria couldn’t help but laugh as she entered the room alone, applauding them as Myla continued to rip off the vent cover even as she stood there watching them. Mikhailo knew that they had lost, again, but Myla didn’t want to give up, didn’t want to be separated from her brother again, and she hurled the vent cover at Maria, who easily sidestepped it, a smile still on her face. She immediately threw herself at Maria, and Mikhailo made a movement to hold her back but stopped, knowing that she’d just fight him first before doing what she wanted to anyway. Myla raged against Maria, using all the martial arts tricks and hand-to-hand combat she had been taught that far, fighting against a woman twice her size and many times her experience. Maria defended herself with ease, gracefully blocking Myla’s hits and absorbing some of the kicks on her shins, sidestepping and moving with her when she came close.

Myla was going to lose, but she didn’t give up, didn’t stop trying to find an opening. Mikhailo stayed in the background, slowly circling in the opposite direction of his raging sister, moving just outside of Maria’s peripheral vision as she was focused on the 9-year-old whirlwind. He held the two unbent paper clips Myla had used to get out of the handcuffs in between two fingers and waited patiently for Myla to push Maria backward, just close enough for him to reach her with two quick steps. His sister screamed, having managed to find an opening as she punched Maria in the stomach, and Maria doubled over with a groan, her face level with Myla’s who grabbed her by the neck. Mikhailo ran forward, but just as he was about to reach Maria and stick the paper clips in her eye, she turned in a half circle, calmly taking Myla’s hand off her neck and bringing it with her, twisting it around as she straightened up with a knife to Myla’s neck. Mikhailo stopped in his tracks, his mouth slack as a small trickle of blood appeared on Myla’s skin. Maria waited with raised eyebrows and he sighed, tossing the paper clips away from him and displaying his empty hands palm-side up so she could see that there was nothing left. Myla growled at him, still breathing heavy from the fight but not capable of moving with Maria’s knife on her throat and her arm bent behind her back.

“Sit,” Maria told Mikhailo, and he dropped to the floor, a deep sigh escaping him.

Maria waited a few more seconds before she removed the knife from Myla’s neck and let go of her arm, taking a step back. Myla immediately turned around to fight again, and Maria slapped her in the face hard enough that Myla hit the floor with a thud.

“Learn when you’ve lost, kitten,” she said calmly and whistled before bending forward and slipping her knife back into an ankle strap. The door opened and three men walked in, each holding a chair. They paid no attention to the children as they placed one chair next to Maria and two opposite hers. Maria sat down and Mikhailo scrambled up to sit in one of the chairs opposite hers. It took Myla a few more seconds to get up off the floor and sit, glaring at Maria, who crossed her legs and steepled her fingers as she observed the siblings in silence.

The silence stretched on, the siblings trying to sit still as Maria looked back and forth between them, seemingly making up her mind about their combined fates. Mikhailo could feel the anger flowing off Myla in waves, could feel her slowly losing her patience and wanting to lash out, and he somehow knew that Maria was waiting to see how long she would last, that Myla’s ability to calmly sit and wait could decide their future.

So he farted.

Mikhailo kept his face passive, completely void of any emotion as Maria’s eyebrows shot into her hair and her big eyes stared at him. Next to him, he could see Myla’s head whip up to look at him, and it took her all of 3 seconds to burst out laughing like he knew she would, like she had always done at home when their father would fart in his sleep and all the brothers would try to be the first to fart straight after. It took all the mental strength he had not to laugh along with her and to keep looking straight ahead, eyes locked on a small indentment in the wall behind Maria, not even a ghost of a smile passing over his lips. Maria smacked her lips and she sighed, softly shaking her head at how Mikhailo had managed to defuse the tension building in the room. She raised an eyebrow at Myla, who quickly swallowed her laugh, and took a deep breath before pinching the bridge of her nose.

“You shall both be transferred to a different section,” she started, and both siblings turned their blue eyes to stare at her, concentrating on her words.

“I don’t care how you do it, but Myla has 3 months to take the exams to your science levels,” she motioned her head towards Mikhailo, “and you have 3 months to reach her strategy rank.”

They both nodded excitedly, but Maria held up a finger before bending slightly forward, all smiles and exasperation absent from her face, her eyes cold and serious.

“You will eat, sleep and shit together. You will study, train and fight together, and you will make sure that you protect each other because no one else will. You will depend on one another and no one else. You two will be that special case that everyone hates, and everyone will try to ruin you, coaches and students alike, so deal with those consequences without killing anyone unless it is strictly necessary.”

Mikhailo could see Myla lean slightly towards him but he straightened up and nodded, and Myla immediately copied his posture. Maria steepled her fingers again before her steely grey eyes looked from Myla to Mikhailo, and Mikhailo could hear his sister swallow.

“Understand this. If one of you fails a class, you both die. If one of you gets eliminated, you both die. If one of you causes trouble, you both die. If one of you so much as steps a _single_ toe out of line, you both die. And I don’t mean that you get expelled or put into a different section. I mean that I will bury you with the others in the forest because I am not in the mood to deal with any sibling rivalry or revenge plots within my division. Do you understand?”

Mikhailo wished he could swallow. “Yes, Mistress,” he said, hoping that his voice hadn’t wavered.

“Yes, Mistress,” Myla echoed, sounding very sure of herself.

Maria nodded in affirmation and leaned back again, some of the tension bleeding out of her posture.

“You will report to me on a monthly basis. If this exercise goes well and you’re not dead within the year, I’ll see within which specialization we’ll put the two of you after the selections. And don’t tranquilize your coaches again, it’s embarrassing.”

The siblings nodded quickly.

“Any questions?”

Myla timidly raised her hand and Maria lifted her head in Myla’s direction. Myla folded her hands on her lap and cleared her throat before blinking her large, blue eyes at Maria.

“What do you consider a ‘strictly necessary’ killing?”

Maria’s lip twitched and she managed to suppress most of her sigh before getting up and walking out of the door. Once the door closed behind her, they could hear her muffled laugh coming from the other side, and Myla smirked as she low-fived Mikhailo’s waiting hand.

Their lives together hadn’t been easy in the new section, having to start all over again with people that had lived and fought together for at least 3 years. As Maria had predicted, the coaches didn’t give them preferential treatment despite them not being abreast with the material, and the other students mostly stayed away from them because of the local bullies.

But neither Mikhailo nor Myla cared about coaches or students, immediately throwing their energy into keeping their grades up and their rankings high, Myla pumping classic strategy tactics into her brother’s brain in the mornings and Mikhailo trying to teach Myla a year worth of biology, physiology, chemistry, and physics at night. Within the first week, they had gotten into a number of smaller push-and-shove actions, mainly instigated by a small group of older kids that didn’t like the new competition within their section. Mikhailo was very good at taking the small hits and only defending himself when truly necessary, but all the pushing and shoving and taunting was starting to grate on Myla’s nerves. However, Maria’s warning rang in her ears, so she took the hits and only glared at the instigators, sidestepping most of the kicks and only once shoving back when it was clear the girl wasn’t going to stop punching her. It didn’t take long for Myla to feel ready to explode, but every time she saw her brother evade rather than attack, she took a deep breath and followed his lead.

It only took about 2 weeks for someone to take it too far.

The majority of their section slept in a large sleeping hall, filled with bunk beds. After the lights had gone off that night, the room hadn’t settled down as usual. Myla slept on the top bunk of their bunk bed, and that night, she had made sure to keep her rope made from braided ribbons under her pillow. Something was going on, or something was going to happen, and most of the kids were not subtle enough to keep their excitement from showing. Everyone loved drama when it didn’t affect them.

The excitement eventually settled down as the kids started to fall asleep, and Myla could hear Mikhailo snoring from the lower bunk; he was never good at staying awake at night. She flitted in and out of a light sleep, every tree branch scratching against the window waking her up, the bark of a dog outside putting her on high alert. She gripped the rope tightly and took a slow breath, calming down her heart rate. Opening her eyes to get used to the darkness, she focussed on what she could hear; her brother’s heavy breathing, someone talking in their sleep, someone turning around in bed, a soft shuffle of feet.

She heard someone move too quickly for them to be walking to the bathroom and slowly kicked the sheets off her legs in case she had to move. Another pair of feet came from the other side and she stopped moving, trying to figure out how many people were walking around. Someone coughed in their sleep and everyone went quiet, so she waited. And waited. Just when she thought that it might have been her imagination, she saw movement in the corner of her eye, two shapes coming towards their bunk.

She kicked off the remainder of her blankets just as the bigger of the two shapes reached the bunk and she saw him jab something down, the sound of cloth ripping reaching her ears. Screamed as she jumped off the top bunk with her rope in hand, she hit his back, both of them tumbling to the floor. The second person skidded around her to the other side of the bed, and she heard a grunt, but she couldn’t see what was happening as the boy she had jumped on started turning around.

Yegor, about twice her size, a great marksman, a little slow in the science courses, and the section’s meanest bully, struggled to his knees into a defensive position. Myla didn’t wait for him to find his balance again but grabbed the rope on both ends and threw herself forward, aiming for his neck. Her weight threw them a little backward but Yegor held his position, Myla essentially having fallen into his arms and sitting on his lap. Yegor had been thrown off by finding Myla in his lap until she pushed the rope under his chin, bringing her hands behind his neck and switching the ends of the rope in her hands and pulling her arms back, effectively wrapping the rope around his neck. He tried to push her off him, but she twisted the rope twice around her hands so she wouldn’t let go, and pulled.

With one hand, Yegor tried to pull on the rope twisted around his neck as the other punched Myla wherever he could reach; her face, her stomach, her arm. Myla brought down her arms and slid even closer to him to minimize his fist’s reach, but he grabbed her by the hair and pulled her head back. She screamed and her grip slackened slightly, but when he let go of her hair to pull at the rope, she brought her head forward and headbutted him in the nose. He grunted loudly and brought his hands to cover his bleeding nose as tears sprang to his eyes, falling backward to the floor and bringing her with him. As his head hit the floor, Myla used her momentum to elbow him in the mouth before pulling the rope tightly again, an involuntary battle cry erupting from her chest as she leaned back. Eyes wide and frightened, Yegor started thrashing, his movements no longer coordinated as he was quickly losing the ability to breathe, but Myla took the hits and shoves he managed to land, keeping her position on his chest as his movements slowed down.

She didn’t trust that he had actually passed out so she kept the pressure on the rope, moving forward on his chest for a better position. After what felt like an eternity, she loosened the rope to see if he would react, but Yegor stayed limp on the floor. She kept the ropes loosened but in place and twisted around to see Mikhailo sitting on the ground on the other side of the bed, holding a struggling Anna in a chokehold. She looked at the bed and found a huge fork, like those that the cooks used to barbeque meat on the grills outside, sticking out of the middle of Mikhailo’s bed. She didn’t know how her brother had evaded the fork, how he had known that something was happening when he was always so deeply asleep, but she knew that the fork had been meant to gravely injure him, possibly even kill him, and a little something inside of her snapped.

She turned back to Yegor and checked his pulse, finding a weak one as she had allowed oxygen back into his lungs. She waited another 10 seconds, closely analyzing the movement behind his eyelids and the soft heartbeat underneath her fingers. Then she sat back and tightened the ropes again, twisting them around her hands twice, her eyes on Yegor’s to make sure she could see when his body passed out again. Once passed out, she loosened the rope around his neck and let his body recover for a few seconds before she calmly sat back and pulled the rope tightly again.

It took a coach 4 cycles of Myla’s very careful strangling to storm into the sleeping room, turning on all the lights and yelling loudly. She knew he was there but she didn’t seem to hear him, too concentrated on trying to feel Yegor’s pulse. She let strong hands pull her off the boy’s lap and didn’t fight back when they tugged the rope out of her hands either. Her world was a little fuzzy as the adrenaline faded and it took her a while to realize that she was somehow standing in Maria’s office, Mikhailo next to her, both wearing blood-spattered grey pajamas. She could hear multiple adults yelling outside the door but Maria wasn’t there yet so Myla looked up at Mikhailo’s face to find dried blood plastered to the side of his head and into his pajamas, his lip split and a scratch mark near his eye. Her hands suddenly itched, and when she slowly brought them to her face to see why, she found angry, red rope burn marks ripped into her skin. She opened her mouth to say something when the door slammed open and Maria walked in, a dark aura surrounding their mistress.

She smacked the door shut to drown out the sounds from outside and walked to her chair, falling into it with an air of extreme irritation. Adrenaline spiked through both of the siblings but silence reigned over the room as Maria stared at them, looking from one to the other, and then leaned back to pinch the bridge of her nose like she usually did.

“Why…” she started, waving her free hand in Myla’s general direction before sighing, “why didn’t you just kill the kid, Myla? He’s a fucking vegetable now.”

Myla shrugged nonchalantly and clasped her hands behind her back to hide the burn marks.

“I was testing out one of the physiology theories in the textbook, Mistress.”

Maria groaned softly and mumbled something about fucking smart-asses under her breath before closing her eyes and taking another deep breath. Myla nervously shifted her weight from one foot to the other until she saw Mikhailo’s head move slightly to look at her, and she stopped. The silence was killing her.

“And Yegor isn’t dead so you can’t punish Mik,” she eventually blurted out, shutting her mouth with a snap as her brother turned his head to glare at her. Maria’s grey eyes focussed on Myla’s passive face, searching for a hint of malice or anger, but Myla’s face only showed that of a nervous yet sweet-looking almost-10-year-old girl growing into her own. She leaned forward on the desk and clasped her hands together.

“Yegor is as good as dead, Myla,” Maria said softly, “we’ll have to euthanize him.”

Myla nodded quickly.

“I understand,” she replied calmly, having finally reached the point she wanted to make, “but _I_ didn’t kill him.”

Maria’s eyes turned cold and she sat back, her lips pursed as she looked both of them up and down.

“Both of you, go to the infirmary and get your face and those hands checked out. You’ll have bathroom duties for 2 months so wear gloves. Make sure you keep your grades up and don’t let me catch you in another fight for the time being. Dismissed.”

Maria waved the siblings out of her office. As the door closed behind them, she opened a drawer and took out a bottle of vodka and two glasses. Her section chief, Vlad, opened the door and walked in as she filled the glasses with an inch of clear liquid, and he raised an eyebrow before taking a seat. She handed him a glass and they drank in silence until Maria slammed her empty glass down on the table and groaned.

“She didn’t kill him because I told her before they were transferred that they would get in trouble if there was unnecessary killing. But I hadn’t given her a definition of unnecessary killing, so instead, she made sure he was still alive.”

Her chief swirled the clear liquid around in his glass.

“But he’s probably not going to wake up,” Vlad replied before bringing the glass to his lips.

Maria laughed, “Oh, I know. _She_ knows. She fucking said she used the theory in their physiology book to make sure he wouldn’t be waking up again.”

“Well, if he does, he might be brain damaged beyond repair, so he’s technically dead either way.”

“Oh no no no, you don’t seem to understand the loophole she’s using here,” Maria filled her glass again while explaining, a cold smile on her face, “he’s alive! He’s alive within the letter of the definition because if he were dead, they’d be in trouble. The fact that he’s not alive enough to bother her or her brother again is probably just a bonus at this point.”

She took a sip of her drink, and then another.

“What'd he do to provoke her anyway?” she finally asked.

Vlad grimaced before peering into his empty glass and placing it on the table.

“Sasha said that Yegor had tried to skewer the brother with a fork.”

“A fork wouldn’t have done much damage,” Maria dryly noted before taking a sip.

“A large, stainless steel BBQ fork.”

“Ah, that makes more sense.” Maria sighed and slowly put down her glass as she coldly calculating the cost of their fight. “From what I remember, Yegor was a good shooter but otherwise not smart enough for independent fieldwork.”

“He probably would have gone through to the next round, though,” her chief added, and she nodded.

“I agree, but Mikhailo is better than him regardless. He’s very strong in sciences and Myla is in the top of her strategy class. They are also too strong a team to separate and I’d really like to see how far they can go.”

“Do you want to remove them from the section?”

Maria shook her head, “No, they’re staying here for now. The section will settle down after this fight because of the power shift, and I don’t want to lose more kids than necessary to yet another cock-fight if I remove them as well.”

“They don’t seem to have instigated many of the recent fights themselves,” he noted.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t think so,” she replied, “they seem to be more about their combined survival than overall dominance. I think Mikhailo will stay that way for the time being, but you’ll have to keep an eye on Myla to make sure she doesn’t get to the point where she’ll maim preemptively to protect her brother. This section has almost reached its maximum permitted losses.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Maria took the glasses and put them to the side, returning the bottle to her drawer before getting up.

“I’ll be in Moscow until early next week, so make sure no one else dies until I come back.”

“Yes, ma'am. I’ll take care of the body disposal and paperwork.”

“Thank you, Vlad,” she said as she walked to the door.

“Ehm… Maria?”

She stopped with her hand on the doorknob, turning around to look at her chief with raised eyebrows.

“Considering the circumstances, I would recommend we lay off on punishing the whole section.”

“Approved,” she nodded.

“Also, what do we do about Anna?”

Maria frowned, “What’s the matter with Anna?”

“She was Yegor’s accomplice in all this. Meant to keep Myla in line but I guess the roles got a bit mixed up.”

“What are her stats?”

“Average, excels at hand-to-hand but otherwise nothing special.”

Maria shrugged before opening the door, “Let them figure it out for themselves.”

Peace had returned to the section after that fight with just the regular scuffles and in-fighting that every section had but no further attempts on anyone’s life, and no further altercations with the Milkovich siblings. Anna was ultimately defeated in the next elimination rounds after Myla shot her five times in the face and neck at close range. It didn’t outright kill Anna to receive 5 tranquilizer darts in the face and Myla had graciously avoided her eyes, so it was a win-win for everyone involved.

In the following months, Mikhailo and Myla excelled, the two of them together proving to be greater than the sum of their parts. Once the fear of being separated or eliminated lessened, the siblings integrated into the section and made friends. Within another year, the section had fostered a more amicable rivalry where the kids pushed each other to be better, faster, stronger without being at each other’s throats, aside from a few isolated incidents caused by raging teenage hormones and terrible misunderstandings.

After another few years of competitive studying and elimination cycles with students being eliminated to other, lower sections, their small group was combined with the remaining elites and the students split into their respective specializations: Mikhailo further specialized in sniper shooting, chemical concoctions, and explosives, and Myla in theft, forgery, and smuggling. Though Mikhailo’s strengths were more scientific and Myla’s more practical, they always remained together, assisting the other in whatever jobs they did, fulfilling menial aspects of a mission as long as it attributed to the final goal.

The division eventually advanced into practical body clean-up, and from there to minor contract jobs, the students graduating to the point where they had to start working to pay off their life contracts to the Institute and Maria. The majority would stay with the Institute itself and would try to climb up the ranks, being sent out on missions that the Institute itself managed, living on the end of a very comfortable leash. The other students would try to make a name for themselves in the big, cruel world (with a little help from the Institute) or try to sign a smaller Agency to represent their interests. A few of those never made it further than their first job before being shot down by their counterparts, and the two that had been captured and arrested never saw the light of another day. Those that didn’t pay off their contracts within the timeframe provided were inevitably met with a bullet through the head. The Institute had many and extensive ways of protecting itself and its interests.

And then Myla made her stupid mistake and MM was accidentally born. Maria had pinched the bridge of her nose, poured herself a stiff drink and set to work to protect her assets.

In an age just shy of digital cell phones and high-speed internet, Maria used her extensive network of contacts, subtle word-of-mouth and the fact that both Myla and Mikhailo were young and virtually unknown in the industry to mold MM’s image into one of professional, yet mysterious, anonymity. MM was said to be an experienced killer, but her true age was unknown. Meticulous and efficient, she only took interesting contracts that suited her fancy, but she was an unstoppable force once she had accepted a contract with someone’s name on it. The definition of a true silent killer, subtle without leaving a trace. Unexplained drug overdoses, clear-cut murder-suicides and everyday dark alley muggings that just seemed like the victim had run into an excessive amount of bad luck were the order of the day, executed in a manner that no one could lay blame on the client. She was a sight of true beauty, but no one knew what she looked like, and the only way you’d know if a kill was hers was by the M&Ms she sometimes left behind with the dead bodies.

The fact that MM was a two-person (and sometimes more) job and that a big part of the operation was done by Mikhailo was obviously kept under wraps. By pulling a few political strings and personally vouching for MM’s excellent work, she encouraged Il Mago, a particularly elite Agency in Europe, to sign for MM, and within 6 months, a number of high-profile and lucrative jobs were rolling in. Il Mago filtered through what they found worthwhile, and Maria only took one or two of those jobs every few months to keep the demand for MM’s services high, starting with easy, high-profile killing contracts in Europe before moving onto other, more diverse operations. She made sure to have at least one body show up on the news every so often, and that the murders were either attributed to the victims themselves or never solved publicly.

The siblings remained within the clean-up crews to maintain their cover within the Institute, slowly moving towards killing contracts and other, more independent jobs and eventually quitting the clean-up altogether to be deployed to missions internationally. Having vouched for the quality of MM’s work, Maria personally supervised all of MM’s jobs in their first years, using only her most trusted third parties to provide backup or equipment, occasionally even joining the team on-site herself. Myla would get overly stressed when Maria was on-site, but Mikhailo personally thought that Maria was just having fun being back in the field and ordering minions around. Unsurprisingly, Maria was an excellent team leader.

Within 2 years, MM had established herself enough for Maria to draw back some of her influence and most of her participation, Myla dealing directly with a single handler at Il Mago. The siblings had accumulated a good enough team to support most missions, and anything they didn’t think they could handle would be further discussed with the Mistress in private. They traveled around Western Europe for business and pleasure, finally enjoying the freedom that came from having been released by the Institute and having their own money to spend. And like any young adult with a sudden influx of freedom and money, they made a few stupid mistakes.

Myla, a fresh-faced 18-year-old with sparkling eyes and a quick laugh, was always a hit in bars. The anonymity of their job made it that she felt the insatiable itch to get noticed when in public, and she would jump on any stage she could find to sing, dance and party. After a job, Mikhailo and her would celebrate, and after a few drinks, she would inevitably chat up and accept drinks from older men while swiping the cash out of their wallets, coax girls into dancing with her or trying to get into a fight with the local redneck variation. Mikhailo would stick to the background until he’d had a few drinks more and then join his sister into stripping people clean as they wiped the table with them at pool, wickedly grinning into his beer as they did. They would make up fake names and background stories, practice accents and languages with unsuspecting bar patrons, and see how far they could make someone believe their crazy lies. They’d try to subtly use their interrogation skills to tease someone into confessing their darkest secrets, and if all else failed and Myla got a brawl started, they’d keep count of how many people received their fist in their faces.

After the partying, Myla would sometimes end up taking one or multiple boys or girls to her hotel room, partying it up until the clothes came off and then continuing the party from there. Mikhailo generally shied away from her practice, never showing interest in the girls or boys she would try to hook him up with, not even when she tried to get him completely wasted beforehand. It was common knowledge that he had somewhat dated one girl at the Institute when he was about 16, but that hadn’t lasted longer than a month before the girl bounced off to someone else and Mikhailo had to keep Myla from choking her in her sleep. Myla had always assumed that he just found the whole dating or casual-sex thing too complicated outside of the Institute, or that none of the people around fit within his very strict image of the perfect partner, so other than the occasionally lifted eyebrow, she had never commented on it until she would get tipsy and try again with another type of girl or boy.

Mikhailo was very good at keeping issues internalized, at appearing calm on the surface as he frantically threaded water under pressure, especially during missions. In public, he appeared to be a very relaxed and sociable person, talking shit like no other, attracting people by being very aware of their wants and needs and using that against them while lifting their wallets, just for fun. He had an easy smile, always a smart answer, and even as he dismissed every single one of Mandy’s friends, they would still pine for him as he did it.

She had always had her suspicions, but it wasn’t until they had finished a job in Berlin, Germany that his sister realized something was fundamentally wrong.

Myla and her newest group of 5-minute-friends had dragged her, and by proxy him, into a massive bar-hopping tour, going from German pub to German pub, ingesting a significant amount of beer and vodka and tequila. Mikhailo had been thoroughly impressed by the amount of beer the German girls could put away, genuinely enjoying himself with their dry sense of humor and all-around shit talking. He had them laughing until they cried with extravagantly fake stories of their childhood and Myla got a whole bar to sing along to a Britney Spears song. The three tall German girls and the shorter Ukrainian siblings got drunk at about the same time, and for some reason that Mikhailo couldn’t remember, they ended up at a very famous techno club.

As he attempted to order another beer at the bar, he simultaneously tried to keep an eye on his sister and the three tall blondes, but within seconds they were swallowed up in the sea of other tall blondes jumping to the beat of the music on the dance floor. In the time that he had finally gotten the bartender’s attention, he had declined the offer of three different muscular and very good-looking men to buy him a drink and was bumped into by a couple of girls next to him. Once he had repeated his order (“EIN! BEER!”) about a dozen times and sat back down on the bar stool he had swiped from the girls making out next to him, he scanned the bar for possible threats, categorizing everyone in his head from 1 to 10 as fast as his drunk brain could handle, noting a lot of men in leather and girls with short hair but passing it off as a strange German sense of fashion.

A beer appeared in front of him and he fumbled a bit with the cash before finding the €20 bill he had been looking for, smiling at the bartender for no good reason as she walked away. He watched her open the cash register, noting her password and imagining at least four scenarios within which he could swipe the entire register without anyone noticing. He scanned the people standing closest to the cash register again, trying to find someone that looked like security personnel, but instead made eye contact with a stoic looking man in black clothes, sporting a very typical army-style buzz cut. Mikhailo blinked, but the man was still intently staring at him, looking very much the way Myla did when she’d found a mark. The man was setting off every single red flag in Mikhailo’s head and his stomach turned, all the alcohol in it making him feel sick and weak as a nagging feeling in the back of his head told him that he knew that face, that he had seen that man before. He tried to go back in his memory, pulling up everyone that had been present at their last job, and the job before, the people in the hotel, the waiters at the restaurant, the taxi drivers, but no one fit the bill. He tried to go further in his memory; MM’s former crew, their clean-up team, his section--

_Sasha Nozhin._

The name appeared in his head just as the man winked at him, a dangerous smile appearing on his face before he turned around and effectively disappeared into the crowd. Mikhailo stood completely frozen, eyes wide in shock and cheeks flushed as if he had just seen the ghost of Christmas past, his brain going in overdrive at what could only be the man who had once been a boy in the Institute, his only real rival within the science department, his best friend until that time in the forest near the Institute when the moonlight had been playing in his hair and Mikhailo had felt happy and light and _free_ for just a moment, had kissed Sasha and felt all the turmoil in his head disappear on his lips even if he hadn’t understood yet what that meant. But his moment of zen hadn’t lasted long; once he could think again, Mikhailo had made sure to avoid Sasha at all costs, looking for ways to fix what was wrong with him as he tried to push away all those bubbly yet terrifying thoughts and feelings that had no business being in his head.

Myla had known something was wrong between him and Sasha, that Mikhailo was upset about something related to their friend, and she set out to make Sasha confess his sins in the last elimination round so she could fix her brother’s problem. Except she never got to the full truth and Sasha was eliminated from the final round before he could give it to her.

After Sasha was transferred to another section following the elimination round, Mikhailo struggled with feeling both relieved and guilty at the thought of Sasha out of sight and out of mind, because he wouldn’t have to deal with the confusion and anxiety he felt every time he saw Sasha’s smile or heard his voice. However, though it took a while to set in, his grief at having lost his only friend eventually outweighed his relief at having gotten rid of his problem. But Mikhailo kept forcing those feelings away, pushing the pain and longing deep down into a dark box in his mind, blatantly smiling through his teeth when waves of loneliness crashed into him, burying themselves in his chest like a knife in a stick of butter when he finally came to terms with the possibility that he would probably never see his friend again.

Until that night.

Mikhailo shot up out of his chair, tipsy mood gone and beer forgotten as he dodged men and women while he walked around the bar, frantically looking around for those familiar brown eyes, the dark hair that had been shaven short, the formerly soft, round face that had turned long and sharp, broad shoulders in a tight black shirt. The word ‘trap’ skidded around his brain but he kept moving forward, concentrating on the black clothing and short hair. Someone in the corner of his eye moved too fast, too stealthily, and he followed the movement towards the bathrooms. The overpowering volume of the techno music echoed through the club and he attributed the slight tremor in his breathing to the bass and the adrenaline throbbing through his body.

The hallway leading to the bathrooms was filled with people; women waiting in line, people drinking and grinding against each other, but no one that Mikhailo recognized. He moved through the small crowd, trying to get to the other side of the hallway to check if there was an exit that way. As he passed two men standing very closely beside the entrance of the man’s bathrooms, he was pulled in by the back of his collar, twisted around and his back slammed against the wall. His breath was subsequently knocked out of him by a fist to his stomach, and Mikhailo groaned softly as he instinctively moved sideways to avoid the second punch, hands moving upwards to protect his face.

He grabbed his attacker by the neck and pivoted, smashing him face-first into the wall, but Sasha turned with the motion, reaching behind him and bringing up his right arm at waist-height with what Mikhailo assumed was some sort of weapon. He pushed Sasha’s shoulder against the wall with his right hand as he scooped Sasha’s wrist with the other, holding his arm close to his body to trap Sasha’s arm there, immobilized and unable to fire the gun he was holding into his direction. Mikhailo could disarm him easily enough by pushing forward his left shoulder and twisting to overstretch Sasha’s wrist, but instead he moved his entire body into Sasha’s, pinning him there as they glared into each other’s eyes, both at an impasse as they panted, breathing each other in.

Sasha moved, and for no reason Mikhailo would be able to rationalize later, he moved forward, pushing his lips onto Sasha’s. He could feel Sasha’s body going rigid underneath his for a split second before a shiver ran through it, and Sasha’s head tilted a little to the side to fit better into his, his tongue pushing into Mikhailo’s mouth without hesitation, as if he’d done it a million times. Mikhailo twisted his shoulder and Sasha grinned as the gun clattered to the floor before Mikhailo kicked it away from them without their lips leaving each other, his hand still clutching onto Sasha’s left shoulder to maintain control. In the corner of his eye, he could see a group of men passing by, but no one cared, no one even gave them a second glance.

Sasha’s free hand stroked up and into Mikhailo’s hair, softly pulling as his teeth grazed Mikhailo’s tongue before his nails ran a path down his back and his thumb hooked into Mikhailo’s pants to pull him closer. On impulse, Mikhailo rolled his hips against Sasha’s and Sasha’s breath stuttered, a soft and broken moan just audible above the music, his body relaxing the tiniest amount before it snapped back into position, pulling away. Mikhailo immediately felt that something was different, and as his brain caught up with his body and prepared to move sideways, Sasha grabbed onto the back of his neck, holding him in place. A smirk played on Sasha’s lips as cold metal was pressed against Mikhailo’s lower abdomen, and Mikhailo suppressed a sigh, his hands slowly raising to shoulder-height after Sasha gave him a knowing look.

Slowly, Sasha turned them around so Mikhailo’s back was to the wall instead, standing close enough to him that an outsider wouldn’t be able to see the knife, wouldn’t recognize a lethal situation if they walked by. Mikhailo took a quick look at the black switchblade in Sasha’s hand and grimaced, knowing fully well that Sasha could have his guts on the floor before he could disarm the knife. However, considering that all his internal organs were still internal generally meant that Sasha had something else in mind, at least for the near future.

“It’s been a while,” Sasha teased softly, his voice deeper and rougher than the last time Mikhailo could remember hearing him speak, a hint of a British accent creeping into his speech, altogether barely audible above the music. It made a shiver run down Mikhailo’s spine. Sasha tilted his head to the right like he used to do when he didn’t understand why a science project hadn’t reacted like it should have and Mikhailo couldn’t help licking his lips. He had always had a certain attraction to men who could handle their tools, and this knife had yet to waver.

“Clearly you haven’t changed much,” Mikhailo replied, relieved that his voice hadn’t cracked and ruined the image of aloofness he was trying to project. His eyebrow raised into his hairline as his eyes flicked from the knife to Sasha’s face.

“You were careless, I couldn’t help it,” he said as his smile turned into a smirk. “Maria will have the shit kicked out of you when you tell her. _If_ you tell her…”

Mikhailo didn’t rise to the bait, knowing exactly what Sasha was referring to. He should have anticipated another weapon and he hadn’t, had put his life in danger for a deep and dark desire that he hadn’t known was so close to the surface. He had lost control of an easily controllable situation, and he also wasn’t sure how Maria would react to kissing as a defensive plan of action when his strategy had so clearly failed.

“What are you here for, Sasha,” he asked instead, hoping to bring the conversation to something more useful than trying to figure out old, dark and messy feelings. Sasha’s eyebrows creased slightly and his head tilted again, and Mikhailo suddenly remembered another thing about Sasha -- he had an amazing poker face. The fact that he could see the emotions running across his face meant that Sasha was as surprised to see him as he was at running into Sasha. Sasha’s mouth opened slightly to answer but two big, black men walked into the bathroom and he moved in closer instead, the knife’s sharp edge still placed right above Mikhailo’s belt as their noses almost touched.

“I’m…” he started, pausing as his eyes flicked from Mikhailo’s lips back up to his eyes, clearly considering his options, “I guess I just wasn’t expecting to find you in a gay club.”

Mikhailo’s breath caught and his blue eyes went wide with shock, and it was all he could do not to violently shake his head in denial as his brain caught up and the penny dropped; the girls making out, the _men_ making out, the leather and haircuts and carefree attitude of his sister and the German girls. Sasha chuckled darkly and he backed up just a little bit, contempt in his eyes.

“You didn’t know, did you, Mik,” he said, knowingly, softly shaking his head. “Still in denial then. Guess I should have seen that coming.”

Mikhailo’s brain was too busy to reply, struggling with the implications of Sasha’s words, trying to fight the strange urge to kiss him again, and Sasha patiently waited a few seconds, curiousity getting the better of him. When Mikhailo said nothing, he sighed deeply, placing his free hand on Mikhailo’s shoulder as he leaned in closer.

“I have business to attend to and you’re too big of a distraction, Milkovich. Take your sister and get the fuck out of Berlin by tonight.”

Mikhailo’s stomach dropped at the mention of his sister, and it must have shown on his face because Sasha backed up a step in surprise, eyebrows high as his face lit up.

“So she _is_ here, how delightful!” Sasha chuckled, “Is she close? Tell her no hard feelings for tonight but next time I see her, I’m shooting her in the chest and there won’t be darts coming out of my gun.”

For a moment, Sasha’s voice got very serious, his brown eyes cold, and Mikhailo genuinely hoped that Sasha wasn’t referring to what he thought he was referring to. However, his train of thought faltered and his brain stopped functioning when Sasha carefully tucked a loose-hanging strand of his hair behind his ear, brown eyes trained on blue ones to gauge their reaction as he did. The contradictory feelings inside Mikhailo made him feel lost, his eyes flicking to Sasha’s lips again, his tongue wetting his own in anticipation even as his brain told him to fight it, to stop the madness, to just disappear into a hole in the ground already.

Sasha smirked and he stroked Mikhailo’s neck with his thumb as he leaned closer, holding his head in place as he pressed their lips together again, tenderly, slow enough that Mikhailo’s eyes fluttered shut against his will. He had almost melted into the kiss when he felt cold metal slicing through a layer of his abdominal skin, and his eyes flew open. For a split second, he froze, unable to look away from Sasha’s cold brown eyes, the feeling of betrayal and shame making his body flash hot and cold at the same time.

Pain slashed through his body and he put both hands on the wound in reflex, not yet knowing how wide and deep the cut was because of the adrenaline rushing through his veins. He could feel Sasha move away but didn’t care, frantically looking around for anything to quickly put on the wound before he could get to Myla and get the hell out of there. The feeling of blood dripping from his fingers shocked him into action and he methodologically smashed into the bathroom stalls with his shoulder until one opened, unrolling the toilet paper until he had enough to press onto the wound. He roughly folded his shirt on top of the toilet paper, maintaining pressure as he rushed back towards the bar.

He couldn’t see his sister but he thought he recognized one of the blonde German girls jumping on the dance floor and started in her direction until a tall, dark and handsome man stopped him in his path, a smile on his face. Mikhailo vaguely recognized the man as one of the three that had tried to buy him a drink, and the words “gay club” flashed in front of his eyes, his breath catching in his throat. The man moved closer, probably so Mikhailo could hear what he was saying, but his brain was no longer in control. In reflex, muscle memory took over and he headbutted the man in the face, Mikhailo’s forehead hitting the man’s nose with a satisfying crack.

The man fell backward and yelled in pain as blood gushed from his broken nose, crashing into a group of people, and bottles and glasses went flying, creating a minor amount of chaos while Mikhailo tried to move away from the drama, the rhythm of his breathing rapidly increasing. Another burly man appeared in his path, his shirt wet with spilled beer, and when he started yelling at him in German, Myla appeared out of nowhere, no doubt assuming that Mikhailo had started some club fight and needed backup. Mikhailo smiled as Myla’s hands prepared to put the man in a wrist-lock until one of the German girls got up into the German man’s face and started yelling back. Myla shrugged and let go of him, moving around the girl to get to his side.

“Abort, _now,_ ” he said as soon as he was sure that she could hear him.

“Emergency exit?” she asked, not missing a beat, and Mikhailo nodded.

Without another word, Myla moved forward, pushing people aside as she looked for an emergency exit, changing direction when she found it. She didn’t look back, trusting Mikhailo to keep up. She took a moment to check if the emergency exit would trigger an alarm and when she was fairly sure that it wouldn’t, she opened the door a little bit, checked the area piece by piece until she was reasonably sure that it was safe.

Once outside, Mikhailo stepped into the faint light coming from a street-level window and lifted his shirt to check on the damage. Though his hands were bloody, there was no more blood dripping from his abdominal skin. A thin line ran right above his belt, straight and red, deep enough to draw blood but not deep enough to have punctured any vital organs. If he hadn’t been so confused and pissed off, Mikhailo would have been thoroughly impressed by the finesse of Sasha's cut; a knife’s equivalent of a warning shot, the perfect distraction. Myla raised her eyebrows at him as he looked up but he tucked the toilet paper in his pants and folded the shirt back onto the wound, shaking his head and motioning towards the street. Following his sister, he kept his back bent forward, not wanting to pull the wound open for it to bleed again. Myla hailed a cab and once inside, she pulled up her bubbly persona to chat up the older driver so he wouldn’t pay too much attention to her brother’s darker demeanour.

Within the hour, Mikhailo’s wound was cleaned and dressed, their bags were packed and they were on their way to the train station. It would take Mikhailo another hour to speak again, telling his sister that he was okay, which he knew was both useless and unnecessary considering that she had already identified the wound as not life-threatening, but she only nodded before turning back to her book. Myla patiently waited while he tried to sort out his head, struggling to acknowledge certain feelings, certain words, refusing to accept what he had known for a very long time to be true. When they got back to their apartment in Kiev, he disappeared into his room and she let him be, knowing from experience that he would eventually tell her what was going on when he was ready to do so.

 

* * *

 

Mandy’s shrill voice half-yelling along to some song went straight through Mickey’s bubble of relaxation and brought him back out of his reverie, only then realizing that he had been nodding off on her couch. He rubbed his eyes and yawned, rolling his head around to stretch out the kinks in his neck. He knew from experience that it was always a good idea to announce his presence to his sister before she realized someone was in her home and decided her knife-throwing skills needed practice, so he took a deep breath and leaned backward over the couch to project his voice towards her bedroom.

“Yo dipshit, I'm back!”

Mandy’s head appeared around the corner, her hair wrapped in an orange towel and a bright smile on her face. Mickey’s mood lifted a little at seeing his sister and he smiled back at her.

“Hey fuckhead, you’re alive! Couldn’t you have texted first?”

Mickey snorted, stretching out on the couch.

“Communication is still out, didn’t feel like stealing a phone. I left you a message, though!”

Mandy disappeared into her bedroom and her music abruptly cut off.

“Yeah, I got the message,” she shouted through the apartment. “Figured they’d keep you dark for at least a week.”

“I tried,” Mickey yelled back, briefly wondering if any of the tech people he knew could make an alcohol dispensing robot on wheels. Speaking of technological advances. "Where's your phone?"

“Hah!” Mandy laughed, “Hardly! Couldn’t you just put your hands down your pants and make due for a few more days?”

Mickey almost sighed in exasperation at what his sister considered a worthy activity for 7 days straight.

“I’m not gonna sit on my thumb for a week and do nothing--”

“No one said to sit on your _own_ thumb!” Mandy interrupted before cackling at her own joke. Mickey groaned and got off the couch, shuffling to Mandy’s liquor cabinet on his dirty socks.

“So where are you going anyway?” he said as he poured an inch of Mandy’s favorite, and most expensive, vodka into a glass. He stared at the glass for a moment and filled it halfway. He was not above passive aggressively punishing his sister for saying stupid shit.

Mandy shuffled into the living room wearing jeans and a black v-neck shirt, tossing her phone onto the couch as she toweled off her blonde hair.

“Did you forget or something? I thought that’s why you're back from going dark so early.”

Mickey sipped his drink while trying to remember what Mandy could be referring to. Her clothes were too casual for it to be anything work-related, but nothing else rang a bell. He walked back to the couch and grabbed Mandy's phone, groaning into his glass as Mandy walked to the kitchen and yanked open the fridge, too tired to deal with, well, _anything_. With a sigh, he unlocked her phone and opened the encrypted email application, composing a short email to their handler that he was back in New York and available for contracts, and to kindly unblock his phone. Mickey sent the email and slid Mandy's phone onto her coffee table.

“Can we bypass the part where you tell me you reminded me of this event 18 times and just… tell me? I’m not in the mood for using my brain right now.”

The fridge door smacked shut.

“The essence of tradition, big brother!" She cracked open a beer and walked to the couch, smirking, "The park. Today is the last day.”

Mickey let his head drop against the back of the couch and closed his eyes.

“Fuck.”

Mandy patted his thigh as she took a sip of her beer.

“Go shower and get changed, I want you to meet someone.”

Mickey grimaced with his eyes closed, wondering why he had gone to his sister’s place if he couldn’t even drink her vodka in peace on her ridiculously comfortable couch. It was all the couch’s fault. Stupid couch.

“Cancel the dude or chick or whomever, man, I’m not up for playing nice tonight,” he tried, but to no avail. Mandy smacked his thigh, hard, which had historically been her preferred way of trying to wake him up.

“First of all, it’s one in the afternoon.” She smacked his thigh again, on the exact same spot. “Secondly, I know that’s _my_ fucking vodka you’re drinking, and” _-smack-_ “third, get the fuck off my couch and into the shower ‘cause you stink. You’ve got 10 minutes before I go find my BB gun.”

Mickey sighed, subtly holding his glass away from Mandy so she wouldn’t confiscate her vodka. He groaned and got off the couch ( _‘stupid couch_ ’), slowly dragging his body to Mandy’s bathroom, sipping vodka as he went.

Though they no longer lived in the same apartment but now lived within a half-mile radius of one another, Mickey and Mandy kept enough clothing and toiletries at each other’s places in case of emergencies and every other occasion that required a quick makeover. Mickey finished his drink between taking off his clothing and rummaging through Mandy’s cabinet for his toothbrush and her toothpaste. He heard the sound of the tv turning on as he stepped into the shower, turning on the water as scalding hot as his body could handle and muffling all sound as he let it beat down on his body. He closed his eyes and rested his head against the tiles, disassociating the thoughts in his mind from the pains of his body, letting the water and steam suppress the need to be in the moment, to worry about the future, and instead, just to _be_. He concentrated on his heartbeat, on the feeling of being warm, on his body calming down. He focussed on the heat in his muscles, rolling his neck, shoulders, relaxing his back, wiggling his toes. He slowed his breathing and cleared his mind, feeling the heat combine with the alcohol, the slightest buzz softening his edges, mellowing him out.

The sound of Mandy’s laugh ruthlessly tore him out of his meditation, the sound of water going from soothing to intrusive in a split second, the heat becoming stifling instead of relaxing. A male voice joined Mandy’s laugh and tension spiked through Mickey’s back, his mellow mood immediately gone. He sighed and turned off the water, rolling his neck and shoulders again to release some tension as he found a fresh towel. The tv was still on and he couldn’t hear what was being said, but Mandy’s voice sounded relaxed, so at least he knew he wouldn’t have to come out with all guns blazing. Not that Mandy needed anyone to blaze her guns.

With a healthy dose of reluctance, Mickey toweled off and put on clean clothes while he kept listening in on Mandy’s conversation. He could have turned on the cameras in the living room but Mandy would know and probably yell at him for it later, so he decided against that plan of action. He threw his towel on the floor where he knew it would bother Mandy and took a deep breath, trying to find all that was zen inside of him so he wouldn’t straight up deck the guy just to release some pent-up stress. He knew it was hard for Mandy to find someone she liked, someone outside of their field of work that she could be comfortable and relaxed with. She sounded… at ease, happy even, so he owed it to her to at least _try_ to meet this guy before decking him or to find a better reason to hate him than that he disturbed his pizza-and-whine time.

Mickey took a few deep breaths with his hand on the door, pumping himself up enough to handle further human interaction. He tried a smile, but it felt strange, so he molded his face into his least bitchiest resting-face instead. He looked down and opened the bedroom door, watching his feet as he walked towards the couch, taking another deep breath as he did.

“Ah, there he is!” Mandy said, excitedly, and he looked up at her, and at the guy sitting on the couch next to her, and his breath caught in his chest.

“Michael,” she continued, a little nervously, having picked up on but not understanding Mickey’s sudden change in demeanor, “this is Ian. Ian, this is my cousin Michael that I told you about.”

Mickey could feel the blood draining from his face as he stared at the redheaded man casually getting up off Mandy’s couch. His heart stopped for a moment right before it went into overdrive, and he blinked a few times to hold back the sudden wave of panic that washed over him. The man smiled at him, a kind and casual ‘how do you do’ tug on his lips that didn’t fully reach his eyes, curt and controlled as he walked around Mandy and held out his hand to Mickey. He showed no sign of recognition, no hesitation or moment of shock, nothing to prove that they had seen each other before, that there had been a moment between them from across the ballroom in the networking event just a week earlier. Mickey took his hand, the contact triggering his training, and a similarly composed expression spread over his face as he used just enough pressure to shake Ian’s hand to be polite but not threatening, resisting the urge to wipe his hand on his jeans after he let go.

“Pleasure to finally meet the famous Michael,” Ian commented, and the hair on Mickey’s neck stood up at the sound of his voice, “I’ve heard so much about you!”

Mickey leaned slightly sideways to get a better look at Mandy and raised an eyebrow, to which Mandy smiled and shrugged.

“I highly doubt you heard anything positive in that case,” Mickey replied, his sarcasm bubbling up as a defense mechanism to the whirlpool going on inside his head, flipping through the conference profiles, trying to remember if there had been anyone named Ian while ignoring the effect the man’s voice had on his stomach.

Ian smiled at him and Mandy stepped forward before he could respond, moving between the two men and placing one hand on Ian’s shoulder and the other in Mickey’s neck, pinching softly in warning.

“Well, now that we have completed the introductions,” she noted, moving everyone towards her front door, her smile slightly forced at her brother’s unease, “let’s go shoot some ducks!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With special thanks to my fantastic beta.  
> Chapter title supplied by the awesome Twelve.


	4. What Doesn’t Kill You, Fucks You Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He felt warm breath on his neck as Sasha whispered in his ear.  
> “You still remember how to play poker, right?” Sasha said, and he rolled his eyes hard enough for Sasha to feel it, not dignifying that stupid question with a response.  
> Sasha snickered before leaning in closer. “Just let them win the first two games.”

Considering the distinct lack of parental supervision in their childhood, Mandy had never been one to seek parental approval for her choices in life. Maria’s permission came close but mainly in a professional setting and because she was technically their boss and held the fate of her and Mickey’s lives in her hand at many a point in their lifetime. However, ever since she and Mickey moved around and ended up in the United States to start anew, Mandy merely required her own blessing for the choices she made in her personal and professional life.

Except when it came to people in her inner circle.

Maria’s methods had ensured the irrevocable intertwining of Mandy and Mickey’s lives, making them dependent on each other for their continued success and survival so that the sum of their parts became more important than the individual person. The inherent feminism of MM made Mickey more dependent on Mandy’s role than she was on his, but he was never bothered by that, never wanted the spotlight as such, so that had never been a point of conflict. However, since they moved to the US and changed agencies, his work in chemicals, poisons and explosives had garnered enough attention that he’d be able to flourish independently, without the need for MM to stick around. Or, at least, that’s what Mandy hoped.

Which brought them to the point of concern that Mandy very much _did_ want Mickey’s approval. As a matter of fact, it was at the top of her list of requirements when it came to allowing new people into her inner circle because, eventually, those people would be rubbing elbows with Mickey, and if shit ever went down, she’d choose Mickey. It didn’t matter who the other person was; it could be her long-lost siblings, the fucking Pope, Ron Weasley, or the inventor of handcuffs, she was still going to choose her brother. Theirs was the kind of trust and loyalty built up from their joint survival while standing in the ashes of everything and everyone else around them.

Early on after being reunited, they had made a pact to tell each other everything; every secret, every deep desire and stupid irrational fear, every piece of information someone else could use against them because knowledge was power, and power over one of them meant power over the other, and that was unacceptable. So by knowing all, they could never be surprised by someone else, never fail to see something obvious coming, never be pitted against each other because they already _knew_ everything there was to know. Besides, even in doubt, they always chose each other’s word over that of a third party. In practice, and as they grew older and moved away from their bunk beds into separate rooms, it turned out that it was slightly harder to constantly be so open about everything in their lives.

Myla had no big secrets to deal with; she cared about no one’s opinion but her own and her brother’s, and her brother was not one to condemn much. Even Maria didn’t raise her soldiers in any particular religion, and sex was taught as a tool to use to achieve a soldier’s goals; the soldier’s personal sexual orientation was not of any concern to her. As in any other groups of hormonally raging teenagers living together for prolonged periods of time, sexual experimentation was abundant, but all the Mistress cared about was that her soldiers remained physically healthy, clean of sexually transmitted diseases and that there were no pregnancies interrupting her training or giving her female soldiers the irrational idea to try to flee with the baby and get shot down at the front door.

However, despite Maria’s liberal teachings and lack of sexual shaming by religion or otherwise, Mikhailo had been old enough to remember his father’s passionate hatred towards everything homosexual, which included that one occasion where he had Mikhailo and his 3 brothers come along with him and his friends to beat up a gay couple they had accidentally found out about. Only half of the couple survived the brutal attack, but the police could somehow never identify Mikhailo’s dad as the instigator. At 9 years old, his father’s loathing had made enough of an impression on Mikhailo that he vowed never to be gay, to push away that feeling that something was off, that there was something about other boys that he liked but wasn’t supposed to, wasn’t going to, flat-out denied it all. That feeling never went away, only festered inside of him, turning itself into the Milkovich equivalent of Catholic guilt without a priest to confess to. And when push came to shove, it turned into crippling self-doubt, self-hatred, and a kick-gut reaction to shove his fist into any boy’s face that looked at him funny. And then the Sasha thing happened.

Once upon a time, Sasha Nohzin was one of Mikhailo’s closest friends at the Institute. The two boys had similar enough backgrounds; Sasha’s father had choked his mother to death in front of him and his baby sister, and after his father’s conviction, the two kids were placed in the foster system. His sister was young and cute and was adopted right off the bat, but he bounced from house to house, dealing with abusive foster fathers and indifferent foster mothers who were only in it for the paycheck. He was 8 when he mentioned that a boy was nice to him in school, and his overly religious foster mother at that time had whipped him with a belt until he bled, crying as she yelled at him to never say such disgusting, unnatural, blasphemous lies in her house. With his back bleeding and his trust damaged beyond repair, he hid and cried in the back of a closet for an hour, not understanding what was wrong with boys being nice to him. He became more introverted, mentally absent, randomly skipping school, eventually only coming home for dinner and to sleep. He’d spend most of his time on the streets, accidentally getting involved in gangs and fights because there was nothing else to do, learning to accept pain as an integral part of life. He eventually figured out what his foster mother had meant that day after he saw gang members beat up a guy because he had looked at one of them funny, ‘but in a gay way’. Eventually, the family could no longer deal with him and gave him back to the foster system, but he had become too old and rebellious for them to handle, so at 10 years old he landed in an orphanage where Maria found him.

At age 13, a boy and a girl were transferred into Sasha’s section at the Institute. They stuck together like glue, quiet, seemingly timid, not socializing much with the other kids, only studying and practicing as if their lives depended on it. Sasha quietly observed them as, within a week, their academic expertise and aggressive determination suddenly rattled the ranking within the section, pushing themselves to the lead and putting others at risk of elimination. On top of that, as was typical when new people joined their section, the established group of egotistical bullies, led by one ugly Yegor, attempted to figure out what they were made of by trying to start a fight to get them in trouble. However, for some reason, the siblings never fought back, avoiding the fights altogether and only pushing back when there was no other way out of the situation. Some kids immediately branded them as incompetent and passive, but Sasha could see the girl fuming, clenching her fists and ready to punch someone though she almost never did. He wondered what it would take for her to crack.

Eventually, the bullies had enough of all the inaction and Yegor decided that blood had to be spilled. Everyone knew it was coming but no one had informed the siblings because no one really knew them or whether they’d be able to win a fight against Yegor, and they weren’t about to side with the potentially losing party in a fight. As such, no one interfered, and Yegor went along with his plan to eliminate the competition.

The problem with your enemy not fighting back is that you do not know your enemy’s strength, and said enemy could subsequently surprise you. Unlike Sasha, Yegor was a hothead who couldn’t sit still and stalk his prey if his life depended on it, which it ultimately did. Had Yegor taken even a few days out of his bullying time to monitor the kids properly, like Sasha had, he would have known that the boy was the least of his problems, relatively calm and collected, interested mostly in his sciences and the accuracy of his shots, more willing to injure than to kill, following his sister’s lead to survive. Myla, on the other hand, always had anger bubbling right at the surface, her eyes constantly moving to find the next threat, like a rubber band poised and ready to snap. She didn’t seem to care much about the classes or training, going through the motions at becoming the best only because it was necessary for their continued survival. She also didn’t seem to care if anything happened to her but when it appeared like someone would hurt her brother, she was practically jumping to fight them. Like a momma bear, she glared at everyone who somewhat looked his way, hiding her fork in her shirt during lunch in case someone as much as bumped into Mikhailo. Sasha anticipated that if her brother was ever injured during a fight, Myla would stop at nothing to kill the responsible person with her bare hands.

And he was right. Granted, he hadn’t anticipated that Yegor would be stupid enough to try to fatally injure Mikhailo, and he also hadn’t foreseen that Myla would practically kill Yegor for trying, but apparently so had no one else in the section. The rule was that Maria didn’t care about and wouldn’t punish the section for in-fighting as long as there were no permanent injuries. Practically speaking, it meant that the older boys or girls would generally break up a fight if it went on for too long or someone would go find a coach to break it up instead, which routinely happened at least twice a month. However, the entire section seemed to be in shock when the scrawny, 9-year-old girl kept choking Yegor out with a rope. It was clear that Yegor wouldn’t survive Myla’s wrath for long. Furthermore, considering Myla’s lack of weapons, any of the older boys could have easily and safely pulled her off Yegor, and any of the younger children could have gone to find a coach so the entire section wouldn’t get into trouble for fatal in-fighting. But no one had been willing to intervene.

The strange thing was that, when all was said and done, the section was never punished for that fight, probably because Yegor had actually died, which in itself was unprecedented for the section up until that point in time. With Anna on the chopping block and the remaining bullies not willing to instigate anything new for fear of turning the entire section against them, a sense of calm descended upon them after those weeks, the ongoing tension that Yegor had created finally dissipating. When most of the fear of retaliation from the section had passed, Sasha could no longer resist and decided to become friends with the boy in the best way he knew how.

Sasha was a year older than Mikhailo, an expert marksman, specialized in knives and other blades but with a soft spot for explosives. Mikhailo had dropped into their section mid-term and was placed in the advanced chemistry class that Sasha was in. Sasha had noticed him struggling with a particularly tricky mix of chemicals necessary for the experiment they were running, and in their next class, he sat next to Mikhailo, casually monitoring the boy’s progress as he got his own experiment going until midway and waited. He knew that Mikhailo had missed a key instruction and was understandably getting more and more frustrated with the experiment as he kept failing and had to restart it 3 times. The boy looked around at the other students to see if he could figure out what he was doing wrong but no one was paying any attention to him or offering to help because neither he nor his sister had bothered to make friends with anyone since they got transferred. They may have also been a little scared of them after the whole Yegor debacle.

At his 4th try, Sasha leaned over and put his hand on Mikhailo’s to stop him from raising the beaker and pouring two liquids together, which would ruin the experiment again. Mikhailo froze in shock, his blue eyes flickering from Sasha’s hand on his to Sasha’s face and back. Ignoring the look, Sasha lifted his hand from Mikhailo’s to point at the other beaker and the Erlenmeyer flask, telling him just what he’d been doing wrong and how to correct it. He then flashed a smile before turning back to his own beakers and flawlessly executing the experiment without another sideways look at Mikhailo, who was alternating between looking at what Sasha was doing so he could copy it and drilling holes into Sasha’s skull at the sheer audacity of correcting him. Having finished the experiment, Sasha leaned back into his chair, pretending to be interested in whatever their professor was saying, and after a minute of soul-searching, Mikhailo followed Sasha’s instructions, completing the experiment successfully.

Sasha started working on his report, keeping track of Mikhailo in his peripheral vision. The boy was fuming, clearly having some internal debate with his 11-year-old self, and he pretended not to notice, keeping his eyes on his paper as he wrote a conclusion to the experiment. When the class ended, Sasha gave Mikhailo a smile and a nod before walking out to his next class, leaving the boy behind. He walked by the siblings at dinner that night as they ate and studied, feeling Mikhailo’s eyes burn into his back, and in the subsequent morning training, Myla was joining her brother in the glaring as moral support. Sasha ignored the glares and kept sitting next to Mikhailo in chemistry, offering help when Mikhailo seemed to be doing something wrong, giving a random tip here and there regarding something the younger boy must have missed.

However, within 2 weeks, it seemed like the boy had already caught up in class, and one day, Mikhailo smugly pointed out something Sasha was doing wrong, to which Sasha had regarded him with big, shocked eyes before his lips turned into a smirk. Day by day, the sense of competition between the two boys increased, each trying to outdo the other by mixing a more potent explosive, assembling an antidote faster, creating a more powerful tranquilizer. Teachers moved them to the back of the room so they would stop disturbing the other students with their bickering about how something the other had done could have been done better or faster or bigger. At dinner, Sasha sat with Mikhailo and Myla for their science studies and quietly studied along with them, occasionally interjecting with an example or a shortcut he knew, calmly explaining a procedure to Myla once Mikhailo’s patience ran thin.

Myla eventually warmed up to Sasha’s sharp mind, infectious laugh and seemingly carefree attitude. She liked him but she didn’t completely trust him, if only because she didn’t trust anyone but Mikhailo to have her back. But sometimes, when they were studying outside or during a break before training, she’d see Sasha’s eyes glaze over and a little bit of darkness rise up, his breathing slowing down, his voice becoming a little sharper than necessary when he’d subconsciously say something while in deep thought. He would snap out of it within seconds with that annoying smile on his face, but she liked it better when she could see underneath someone’s shroud, when she could trust their words because the darkness had stripped away all sugarcoating or wishful thinking. It proved he was human. It also proved he was dangerous. But then, so was she.

As life moved on in the section and the siblings passed their first few monthly reports with Maria without too many nose-bridge-pinchings, they started integrating more with the other kids in the section. Myla made a few friends and got into a few fights, Mikhailo made a few friends and blew some shit up. For 5 years, the section thrived, everything feeling more carefree, relaxed, sometimes even positively pleasant as the inter-sectional rivalry brought out the ambition in most of them and the elimination rounds picked off a good number until only the elite soldiers remained; Mikhailo, Myla, and Sasha included. Albeit that everyone had their own friends and frenemies, the three of them stuck together; a core group within the greater movement of their section.

Once the tightly knit duo became a trio, Maria regularly called the three of them into her office to explain why the chemistry lab had an extra hole in the wall or how come a number of pans from the kitchen had disappeared for a night, just to reappear the next morning with a lot of new dents. The former was the boys’ fault, the latter Myla’s, but they always took the punishment together, generally corroborating each other’s story with so much bullshit that Maria would just pinch the bridge of her nose, punish all three of them, and hope she could survive the three of them together.

But that issue would eventually be resolved without her direct interference.

In the midst of all the training and classes, the movie nights in different languages, the etiquette and dancing courses, the cooking, the cleaning of kitchens and bathrooms, the polishing of weapons, and the moving from the big sleeping quarter to individual rooms, the young children grew up into adolescents, and hormones ruled the section. Condoms were readily available in the dormitories and the girls were put on birth control because while there was a strict no-opposite-sex-in-the-bedrooms-at-night rule, Maria wasn’t going to kid herself into thinking that the young men and women weren’t going to experiment sexually during the day. Furthermore, she would frankly be insulted if her soldiers couldn’t slip past their coaches at night as well. Sex and seduction were a permanent part of the curriculum, so it was only fair that her soldiers got to hone their skills. With no imposed preference, almost all of the girls and most of the guys swung either way, if only to understand how it all worked in case they needed to use their theoretical skills in a practical situation with either sex.

At 14, Myla was one of the youngest girls in the section and not yet particularly interested in the whole sex thing, other than theoretically, so it didn’t entirely stand out that Mikhailo was spending a lot of time studying, training or hanging out with his sister and not at all involved in the activities of his fellow 16-year-old friends. Myla didn’t fully understand why her brother never wanted to go partying with his friends but considering that they were consequently on the top of every ranking, her competitive streak also didn’t really care.

Sasha, on the other hand, now 17 and practically ruling the section for the second year running, had his bedroom door permanently ajar and nighttime schedule frequently filled, his time spent with the Milkovich siblings dwindling down until exams came around or elimination rounds were announced. He consistently invited Mikhailo to the midnight runs in the woods, or game nights, or whenever the older kids were allowed to go into the city on missions, but Mikhailo always shrugged and appeared uninterested, not flat-out refusing but also never showing up. Not even Sasha’s best puppy eyes worked on him, generally resulting in a book being tossed at Sasha’s smirking face, which he would catch and return with a cocky smile before winking and strutting out of the room.

Until Mikhailo’s curiousity got the better of him.

Mikhailo’s imagination had been running wild for months, imagining all the good, bad and ugly things that could be ongoing on those random midnight 'runs' and 'game nights' and whatever else it was Sasha organized. His best friend had explicitly told him he wouldn’t tell him what went on during those nights unless he asked, and Sasha’s knowing smirk only fanned the flames of Mikhailo’s mind further while his ego wouldn’t allow him to ask or push the subject. So instead, he had pieced together stories from gossip overheard from other people during lunch or dinner, girls staring and giggling at Sasha during training, guys passing Sasha by with a knowing look in their eyes, and coaches mumbling under their breath at yet another hickey.

One Friday, during a balmy summer morning study session, Sasha invited Mikhailo to yet another unscheduled game night that evening. As usual, Mikhailo had not refused but also not accepted, and after Sasha batted his eyelashes as usual, a book was thrown, caught and returned. The ritual was completed but Mikhailo’s concentration was shot. During their subsequent morning run, Myla had to repeatedly punch her brother in the arm so he would speed up and finish in a disgraceful 5th place, and during the afternoon training session he completely missed Alec’s elbow coming towards his stomach at full-force because Sasha winked at him while talking to Gregory a little further away.

By the time dinner came around, Myla was out of patience at Sasha’s cat-and-mouse game as she sat across from her brother and him at the dinner table, listening to the random bullshit he was sprouting. Sasha kept indirectly baiting her brother, throwing around innuendos left and right while talking to everyone at the long table but the boy next to him, who was getting more and more frustrated and flustered. Having dismissed physical assault as an adequate response to her growing exasperation, she finished her food and placed her cutlery on her plate, her face stern as she gave Mikhailo a pointed look. Her brother raised his eyebrows at her and rolled his eyes, returning his gaze to his spoon swirling around in the food he was playing with. She turned to Sasha instead and waited until he took a bite of mashed potatoes before addressing him.

“Mon chéri,” she said, pausing as if in search for words, “ça va être qui le chanceux ce soir?”

Sasha promptly choked, his trachea clearly not agreeing with the texture of mashed potatoes, and Mikhailo’s eyebrows shot into his hairline. Practically every pair of eyes within earshot of Myla’s statement turned to Sasha, clearly also interested in which boy Sasha was apparently planning to sleep with that night. Myla stood up, grabbing her plate and cutlery.

“Aw, guess you better work on that gag reflex of yours, huh sweetheart,” she said as she pushed her chair back, “try swallowing next time.”

She pranced away, satisfied to leave behind two boys that were red in the face for completely different reasons and a table full of wolf-calling, immature teenagers.

That night, Mikhailo went to bed wearing his darkest shirt and pants, his shoes ready to go. He knew of at least 2 boys in his dormitory that had been rumoured to attend a number of Sasha’s game nights, so when he heard them both getting out of bed and sneaking out, he put on his shoes and followed them. With a full moon to guide his way, he kept a safe distance between them, going around the other side of the atrium they passed by, hiding behind big trees, absolutely certain that they could hear his heart beating in his throat from far away. He silently questioned the purpose of all their training and his ability to operate in the field if a little innocent stalking in the woods made his legs tremble and his dinner threatening to rise up in his stomach.

A very slow and cautious 10-minute walk brought them to an unused building on the edge of the grounds of the Institute, hidden by the thick trees of the forest it was in, usually dark and abandoned since part of the roof had collapsed more than a decade ago. From his vantage point hiding behind a bush, Mikhailo saw light flickering behind a window of one of the rooms on the ground floor, but he couldn’t see anyone inside. Ivan and Anton stopped in front of the building and looked around while talking to each other, their instincts telling them something was out there in the woods but not being able to pinpoint what. Fortunately, the boys’ patience ran out quickly and they walked around the building and disappeared from Mikhailo’s view. He waited a minute, maybe 2, and what felt like an eternity later finally convinced himself to emerge from his hiding place, walking the opposite way the boys had gone in case they were suspecting anything. Walking slowly, he listened for any sounds that didn’t belong in the woods, any human whispering or snapping tree branches, but there was nothing except for his heartbeat pumping in his ears and the occasional rustling of leaves by the wind.

When he got to the other side of the building, he found a large door, old and worn, slightly ajar. With sweat running down his spine, he debated going back into the woods to wait and see if anyone else went in or came out, or trying the door and facing whoever was already there. The sound of a girl laughing tore him from his mental pro-and-con list and he took a deep breath before grabbing the side of the door with both hands and slightly lifting it upwards while he pushed it open so it would minimize any creaking. He stepped inside and pushed the door back into its original position, carefully listening to find where the laughter had come from. As he waited to hear more sound, he let his eyes adjust to the darkness inside the faded foyer he was standing in, trying to distinguish the shapes and shadows, finding a partly destroyed staircase, decaying leaves on the floor, trash left behind by people, and a long and dark hallway leading to an even darker room ahead of him. A deeper voice laughed, and Mikhailo recognized it to be Sasha right away. He slowly started walking towards the sound, avoiding branches and rubble on the floor, stopping frequently to listen for any other sounds, his heart pumping in the back of his brain at every scratch of a tree on a window. As he walked deeper into the dark hallway, he heard more sounds, more people talking, but he wasn’t sure yet where the sounds were coming from. He thought he saw a flicker of light underneath a door but it turned out only to be the moonlight coming through the window. He walked on through the hallway, feet light and throat dry as the corridor got darker and he almost tripped a few times. The hallway ended into a door on the left and another dark hallway on the right, and after another pro-and-con list, he put his left hand on the door handle. Hissing softly, he immediately took it off as hot metal burned his palm. A chuckle came from the dark hallway to his right as he cradled his injured hand, and he reached into his pocket just to realize that he hadn’t brought any weapons. The sound of footsteps came closer and his eyes slowly adapted to the darkness of the other hallway until the shape of the figure became Faina’s distinctive walk. She held both hands up to her chest as she walked towards him, palms forward and empty, signaling surrender, and the smile on her face held no malice or malintent; she actually seemed rather smug.

“My apologies, Milkovich,” she said, not looking sorry at all. “If we had known you’d be coming, I would have told you not to touch the door handles, considering the lanterns I heat them with to discourage any uninvited guests from snooping around. Come on!”

Mikhailo grimaced and opened his mouth to reply but Faina had already turned on her heel and flipped her long blonde hair around before walking back into the darkness. He sighed, wiggling the fingers of his burned hand to keep the blood flowing and following her soft footsteps into the darkness. She turned a corner, then another, and further down the hall entered a windowless room, lit by candles and lanterns, heavy with the smoke of cigarettes and cigars. The soft conversation that could be heard from outside the door faltered and stopped as he followed Faina inside and awkwardly paused a few steps into the room, 8 pairs of eyes staring at him, one accompanied with a cocky smirk. They were lounging on old chairs and a couch with mismatched cushions, a few stacks of beer cans and bottles of vodka placed in seemingly random places around the room.

“This is an invitation-only gathering, _Milkovich_ ,” sneered Ivan, and Faina snorted as she walked past him.

“Oh, he’s been invited alright,” she said, shoo-ing Maryna further down the couch and sitting next to her, stealing her bottle of vodka in the process.

“How did you even find this place?” Anton asked, to which an empty can of beer went sailing towards his head.

“He obviously followed you two dumbasses,” Sasha pointed out as he got up off his chair and grabbed another can of beer, “I should just report you and Ivan to Maria so you’ll be kicked down to another section after the final eliminations next week.”

“Oh _jesus_ ,” Vero hissed through her teeth as she glared at Sasha, “stop the fucking section-related talk already.”

Ivan nonchalantly shrugged and leaned further back into his chair, striking a match to light the cigarette dangling from his lips as his gaze followed Sasha. Sasha opened the can and handed it to Mikhailo, continuing on to Faina to snatch the bottle of vodka she was holding. He kissed her on the head before moving away but Faina managed to smack him on the ass with a scowl, then leaning over Maxim to confiscate Bogdan’s bottle. Bogdan just sighed, taking a slow drag from his cigar and blowing out a miniature cloud, his arm resting on the back of the couch behind Maxim. Faina threw her legs over Maryna and leaned back against Maxim’s shoulder before yelling ‘ _ganbei!_ ’ Everyone holding a can or bottle repeated the word and took a swig, and just like that, the tension in the room dissipated.

The soft conversation started up again as Sasha reached Mikhailo, winking as he touched his bottle to Mikhailo’s can before taking a swig. Mikhailo put the cold can in his injured hand and brought it to his lips, slowly taking a sip while his eyes moved from person to person, analysing the dynamics in front of him, the combination of people present, the feeling of anticipation in the air.

The couch and chairs were positioned on the right side of the large room, with the left side being occupied by a large round table. Leaning back into their chairs, Anton and Ivan, both Myla’s age, exhaled cigarette smoke through their nostrils as if they’d been practicing it in the mirror, trying to impress Vero and Evita even as the latter could barely pretend to be interested in anything but Sasha, her eyes constantly flickering to his position. On the couch, Bogdan and Maxim were leaning against each other as they smoked cigars, eyelids heavy and voices low when they spoke to one another. Next to Maxim, Faina had that smug grin on her face again as she was sprawled across Maryna, who was stroking down her neck with a cigarette dangling from her lips. Like Mikhailo, she observed the crowd, and when their gazes met, she winked at him.

Mikhailo promptly turned towards Sasha, whose shit-eating grin had apparently become a permanent addition to his face. Mikhailo raised an unimpressed eyebrow, but it only managed to make the grin more sly.

“So...” Sasha started, stepping in closer, and Mikhailo smelled the vodka on his breath. Maintaining eye contact, Sasha lowered his voice so only Mikhailo could hear him. “I’m guessing you just _happened_ to stumble upon two boys walking in the woods together in the middle of the night and figured you’d follow them, right? Did you see anything you liked?”

Mikhailo frowned, his brain trying to figure out why he would suddenly like part of the woods they regularly trained in.

“Though I’m pretty sure those two truly only walk the narrow path, so they’re no fun,” he continued, and Mikhailo’s train of thought was thankfully interrupted by Evita yelling _ganbei._

Sasha automatically took a swig, his eyes never leaving Mikhailo’s, and something about his friend felt different, the air around him electric. A thought was nagging at him as he took a swig from the beer and looked away, only for his gaze to fall upon Faina straddling Maryna. No one seemed to care about the two girls making out on the couch, least of all the two boys still sitting directly next to them, so he slowly turned back towards Sasha, downing the beer in large gulps as he went. He handed the can off to Sasha and grabbed his bottle of vodka, tipping it back and grimacing as the harsh liquid burned his throat. After what felt like half a bottle but was probably just three mouthfuls, he lowered the bottle and looked up to find Sasha’s wide brown eyes looking at him, his mouth slightly open.

“Ganbei?” he wheezed and gave Sasha a stiff smile.

30 minutes later, and Mikhailo was happily tipsy and a little bit warm inside, having been restricted by a shocked Sasha to one additional can of beer to cool the slight burn on his hand even as Faina slipped him another one behind Sasha’s back. Consequently, said beer was in a constant danger of sloshing over as he enthusiastically gestured with both hands while discussing the best alternative uses of handcuffs and candle wax with Evita and Faina, much to the chagrin of Ivan who was unsuccessful in joining the conversation and whose pointed glare couldn’t even match Myla’s on a bad day. Bogdan had since fallen asleep on the couch, Maxim and Maryna had walked out of the room at some point, and Anton was hardcore losing a very quick card game to Vero, whose sleight of hand he had yet to discover. Sasha was nursing a bottle of vodka as he observed everyone from the couch, occasionally snorting at Anton as he got more and more frustrated with losing the game.

As Ivan finally said something funny enough to grasp Evita and Faina’s attention, Sasha put down the bottle and got up from the couch, walking around to stand behind Mikhailo’s chair. He laid his hands on the boy’s shoulders and squeezed softly as they tensed, waiting for Mikhailo to relax before he slowly started massaging his shoulders and neck. Breathing deeply, Mikhailo lost track of the conversation as he tried to concentrate on keeping his pulse from racing and his mouth from accidentally moaning at his muscles being unknotted and his neck being stroked. The calm and serenity that washed over him were unfamiliar to his body, a combination of the alcohol and a deep level of trust stopping him from stiffening up and turning snarky. Instead, his eyes fluttered shut as Sasha applied more pressure to his neck, strong fingers kneading from the top of his neck to his spine before repeating the cycle.

Anton chose that moment to finally catch onto Vero’s deception and throw an empty bottle at the wall in anger, rudely ripping Mikhailo from the trance Sasha’s fingers had put him in. His body immediately tensed up and he heard Sasha sigh, his hands resting flat on Mikhailo’s shoulders again. A heartbeat later, Mikhailo felt warm breath on his neck as Sasha whispered in his ear.

“You still remember how to play poker, right?” he said, and Mikhailo rolled his eyes hard enough for Sasha to feel it, not dignifying that stupid question with a response. Sasha snickered before leaning in closer. “Just let them win the first two games.”

Sasha pinched Mikhailo’s shoulder and walked away to round up the troops for the game, opening the door and yelling Maxim and Maryna’s names. A sharp pang of disappointment shot through Mikhailo’s chest at the absence of Sasha’s presence and hands, tension flowing back into his body. He mentally scolded himself as he dragged his chair to the round table, taking a sip from his lukewarm beer after sitting down, focussing on controlling his posture and poker face while blaming the strange sentimentality on the alcohol.

Finally, Anton, Ivan, Evita, Faina, Maryna, Sasha, and Mikhailo were all seated around the table, Vero having been assigned as the dealer because Anton no longer trusted her with the cards and Sasha promised her a pack of cigarettes. A very broadly smiling Maxim opted for a bottle of vodka and the couch, running his hand through his hair as he leaned back and sighed.

The game started innocently enough; because none of them had any significant amount of money to bet, they played for favors. The winner got to order the last player or players folding to do anything they wanted, as long as it was provided or performed in the following 24 hours, didn’t require any equipment they couldn’t easily acquire and didn’t get them into a significant amount of trouble with Maria. All those that folded before the last two had to take a shot of vodka. Evita won first; Ivan got to take over her cleaning duties for the next day. Anton beat Maryna and had her confess what she and Maxim had been doing in the dark hallway, which she did with a broad grin and in great detail. Sasha won from Evita and got her to hand over her last cigarette, which he immediately lit up so she wouldn’t be able to win it back, much to her chagrin.

In the meantime, Mikhailo was playing it safe; trying to find everyone’s tells as he counted the cards, folding as soon as he realized that his hand wasn’t strong enough to beat someone else’s and taking the vodka as punishment instead. He felt like he was doing pretty well until the third round when he couldn’t stop smiling at Sasha’s victory dance yet somehow didn’t seem to care. He almost forgot to fold in the fourth game, and in the fifth, he felt bold enough to continue playing with an absolute shit hand and won against Anton. A warm feeling of euphoria spread through his body as everyone (except Anton) yelled in celebration, the vodka having brought their defenses down and their volume up. With Sasha’s arm around his shoulder and a mischievous look in his eyes, Mikhailo held out his hand for Anton’s favorite switchblade that he always had with him, and with a glare, Anton promised him that he’d win it back.

From then on, Mikhailo was on a roll: he made Ivan drink everyone else’s vodka shot, Evita had to wake up Bogdan with a slap in the face, and Faina performed her best version of the Cossack dance for 30 seconds, which she somehow succeeded without falling over. Even as he folded a few times, he kept riding his high, laughing with his peers, enjoying the thrill of both winning and almost-losing, his slow intake of alcohol keeping him loose and happy but not overly sloppy.

That was until he got too busy trying to remember to count the cards that he forgot to fold again, and both Sasha and he lost against Faina in the same hand.

With a wicked smirk, Faina leaned forward on the table, grinning at the two boys sitting side by side. Apart from Ivan and Anton, who had folded way in the beginning and were discussing a random topic on their side of the table, the girls at the table were all looking at Faina in suspense, the tension in the room rising as she weighed her options.

Before she could speak, Sasha cleared his throat.

“Alright, c’mon, what do you want from me, Fee?”

Faina snorted and waved her hand dismissively in his direction.

“Oh no no no, this isn’t just about you, m’darling,” she said, her finger pointing back and forth between the boys, “both of you lost against me, so _both_ of you owe me now.”

Sasha opened his mouth to protest but Faina’s eyebrows shot up and she held up her finger before he said anything, her eyes drilling holes into Sasha’s skull until he settled down and leaned back into his chair.

Mikhailo’s mouth went dry, not so much at the prospect of losing but at the calculating look in Faina’s eyes when she moved her attention to him instead. Out of everyone, he had dreaded losing against her most because she always seemed to observe things a little too well and understand situations a little too quickly, and with all that intuition and knowledge she had the power to do a lot of damage.

Maryna leaned over and whispered something in Faina’s ear, and Faina’s grin widened just a little, turning a tiny bit evil before she smoothed it over again.

“Okay,” she started, and Mikhailo sat up a little straighter despite himself, “because you both lost at the same time, I shall set a task that will involve the both of you. Yes?”

She nodded at Mikhailo and he copied her motion subconsciously, just wanting to get whatever idea had delighted her so much over with as soon as possible.

“Good,” she said, steepling her fingers. “Now kiss.”

Sasha and his chair almost fell backward as his head popped up while leaning back. He flailed, grabbing onto the table so he wouldn’t lose his balance, his brown eyes wide. Mikhailo just sat there, motionless, his brain having frozen over upon hearing Faina’s words.

“And I don’t just mean a peck on the lips,” she continued, clearly ignoring their reactions, “but a proper kiss, like this.”

Faina turned around and slid her hand behind Evita’s neck, pulling her in closer until their lips touched. Evita’s eyes went wide and she let out a tiny squeal, not having anticipated Faina’s action, but she immediately melted into the kiss, her body turning towards Faina and her hands clawing at the table to keep her balance. Without breaking the kiss, Faina snaked her other arm around Evita’s waist and half-lifted, half-guided the younger and shorter girl off the chair and into her lap. Their lips parted and Faina’s tongue licked into Evita’s mouth, causing Evita to moan and move as close as she could get to the other girl, following Faina’s mouth, her hands moving from Faina’s shoulders into her long blonde hair. Evita pulled Faina’s head slightly backward, grinding her hips forward as she gave herself a better angle at Faina’s lips, which were smirking into the kiss. Slowly, Faina’s hands moved up as well, one hand slipping underneath Evita’s shirt as the other grabbed her by the shoulder, gently pulling her back. Evita groaned, pulling Faina’s head closer for one last kiss before she let herself be pulled away, leaning back against the table, panting softly.

Around the table, Anton and Ivan’s eyes were wide, mouths slightly open, and Vero and Maryna were smirking very knowingly. Sasha reached for the bottle of vodka and took a long swig as Mikhailo went pale and tried to keep his stomach from upending itself out of sheer terror.

Faina grinned up at Evita and sighed, her hand still stroking up and down the girl’s back as she turned towards Sasha and Mikhailo.

“Now. Kiss.” she repeated and winked in their general direction.

Swallowing hard, Mikhailo wished that Sasha had handed him the bottle of vodka, but in the next breath, a hand slipped behind his neck and warm lips pressed on his. In reflex, his eyes opened wide and he pulled back a little, but Sasha’s lips moved with him, one hand cradling his neck and guiding him forward again.

Mikhailo’s hands came down hard on Sasha’s thighs, trying to keep his balance as his upper body twisted to follow Sasha’s hand and lips. Sasha stroked into his hair, pulling slightly, and the soft pain distracted Mikhailo enough to relax and close his eyes, his mouth opening slightly to breathe. Sasha’s lips opened along with his, his tongue licking the inside of Mikhailo’s upper lip, and Mikhailo closed his lips in reflex, tasting the vodka that had been on Sasha’s tongue. As Sasha’s hand caressed down his neck, Mikhailo pressed closer again, mouth opening, craving the taste of vodka and Sasha’s tongue. He moved forward in his chair, sitting on the edge, his leg in between Sasha’s, one hand feeling its way to Sasha’s waist.

Mikhailo felt Sasha smile into the kiss as he clumsily pulled him closer by the waist, and Sasha scooted forward, the motion causing their lips to smack together painfully, but Mikhailo was far beyond the point of noticing that. Sasha slowly kneaded the back of his neck and moved Mikhailo’s head sideways just a little, giving them both space to breathe, and Mikhailo moaned softly as their tongues moved together, their breath combining, their bodies moving with and against each other, hands caressing and gripping tightly.

The sound of a can falling to the floor ripped Mikhailo out of his reverie, bringing him back to the present like a bucket of cold water to the face. Startled and caught off-guard, he pushed himself away from Sasha, struggling to sit back up with his body off-balance and his breath coming in short bursts. Sasha felt him pull away and dropped his hand, waiting for Mikhailo to sit up before turning back towards the table.

They looked up to find Evita, still on Faina’s lap, viciously and repeatedly punching Ivan in the arm as both he and Anton stared at her in fear, a can of beer lying on the floor behind Ivan. Faina and Maryna weren’t paying her any attention, their eyebrows raised high, eyes practically bulging out of their sockets as they stared at Mikhailo and Sasha, mouths slightly open. Vero was watching over the scene at the table with a broad and knowing smile on her face, her head resting in her palm as she leaned forward.

The deafening silence was broken by a deep moan, and everyone whipped around to look at the couch, finding Maxim’s head bobbing up and down into Bogdan’s lap, a soft slurping sound accompanying the motion.

Vero burst out laughing, and with Evita momentarily distracted, Anton and Ivan quickly scrambled out of her reach to stumble towards the door, grabbing a few cans of beer before disappearing from view. Faina sighed and gently lifted Evita off her lap, getting up and grabbing her by the hand before leading her out the door with a finger-wave to the remaining people.

Vero looked from Faina’s departing figure to Sasha and Mikhailo, shrugged and got up, walking towards the couch as she fumbled in her pants' pockets. As she reached the couch, she turned around, frowning, and whistled to Sasha. Sasha sighed, fishing a pack of condoms out of his pocket as he got up and tossed it to her. She caught it with a smirk and blew him a kiss before taking off her shirt.

Mikhailo’s brain had somehow managed to both freeze up and register everything going on around him, but it wasn’t until Sasha addressed him again that he was able to move.

“Are you coming, Mik?” Sasha said, wincing at his own phrasing. “These three are going to get really loud really soon. I mean, unless you want to watch or join, ‘cause they don’t mind...”

Shooting out of his chair, Mikhailo awkwardly maneuvered himself around the table, chair, and Sasha, trying not to touch anything as he walked towards the door and into the hallway. Behind him, he heard Sasha yelling at the others to clean up before they left with a deep moan as reply, and he walked as fast as his intoxicated body would allow him to through the dark hallway towards the exit.

Flinging open the front door, he stumbled outside into the cool night, breathing in deeply and sighing. With his brain temporarily disabled from any and all difficult and emotional decision-making, he focussed solely on placing one foot in front of the other without falling or throwing up. A little melody came to mind as he slowly staggered on, and he timed his steps with his humming, the rustling of the leaves in the wind as backup vocals, all other sound lost within the white noise of his mind as he tried to drown out the repeating image of kissing Sasha in his head, the burn on his lips where they had touched Sasha’s, the smell that was so quintessentially Sasha burned into his nostrils.

The alcohol still coursing through his body was making him a bit dizzy, disoriented, and he eventually looked up to find himself in a part of the forest he didn’t recognize. He looked left, he looked right, and shuffled in a half circle to find Sasha leaning against a tree, an amused look on his face.

“I’m never letting your near vodka again, Milkovich,” he said, a smile on his lips, “Myla is going to shoot me for this.”

Mikhailo’s temper flared up, and he stumbled back towards where Sasha was standing, one finger pointed at his chest.

“I am perfectly fine with vodka!” Seething, he poked Sasha in the chest. “I can take _all_ of them! I was even winning!”

Sasha snorted, easily fending off Mikhailo’s poking finger when he tried to go for a second jab. “Yes, you did, Mik. You definitely beat them all towards the end.”

Mikhailo stumbled backward and Sasha grabbed him by the shoulder, turning him around so he stood with his back against the tree. Sasha slowly let go to see if Mikhailo would pitch forward or not, and when he didn’t, conjured a bottle of water from his back pocket and offered it to Mikhailo. Unmoving, Mikhailo just stared at the bottle until Sasha sighed and opened it for him.

“Drink, Mik, please.” Mildly exasperated, he shoved the bottle in Mikhailo’s hand, “I would really prefer not to have to carry you back.”

After staring at the bottle in deep contemplation for what felt to Sasha like an eternity, Mikhailo brought it to his lips and almost pitched sideways. Having anticipated this, Sasha caught the boy by the waist, bringing him upward and holding him steady as he dutifully drank down the whole bottle in one go with only minor spillage. When he was finished, Sasha put his right hand on Mikhailo’s left shoulder to keep him upright against the tree and took the bottle, scrunching it up with one hand and pushing it back into his back pocket.

With his head slightly tilted, Mikhailo stared up at Sasha, at his dark brown eyes and short hair, the very light scar he knew was near his temple from an exploding beaker 3 years before. For some reason, he smelled exceptionally good, and the light of the full moon made Sasha’s skin glow in a way Mikhailo had never noticed before. He wondered if Sasha’s tongue still tasted like vodka.

Mirroring Sasha, Mikhailo put his right hand on Sasha’s left shoulder, pulling Sasha in a little closer to make up for his shorter arms.

“How long have you been here?”

Sasha’s eyebrows raised, but he didn’t move away, despite the strange positioning.

“Ehm, well… I followed you from the house because you weren’t listening when I told you you were going the wrong way, and then you started humming really loudly at some point, so I figured I’d just… let you do your thing and… follow you?”

“Ah.”

Silence.

“But… you are here now.”

Sasha suppressed a sigh. “Yes, I followed you so you wouldn’t wake up in Romania tomorrow.”

Mikhailo snorted, wobbling a bit as he did. Within the Ukraine Institute, Romania was a common reference when the kids talked about leaving the Institute and running away, or when agents defected or disappeared under suspicious circumstances.

“Hmmno,” he shook his head at that ridiculous idea, “is _way_  too far away, would have to keep walking and walking and walking and walking...”

Trailing off, he gestured to somewhere in the distance, over Sasha’s shoulder and not at all towards Romania, and Sasha smiled in response. With a deep sigh, Mikhailo closed his eyes and let his head rest back against the tree trunk, his hand dropping back down on Sasha’s shoulder, pulling him in a little closer as he did. Sasha moved with him, making sure Mikhailo didn’t lose his balance again as the smile still tugged at his lips.

After a few deep breaths, Mikhailo’s head lolled to the side before he opened his eyes, staring at Sasha for a moment as if he were searching for something.

“You wanna come to Romania with me?”

Eyebrows shooting up, Sasha didn’t manage to provide an answer before Mikhailo’s hand curled around his neck and drew him in closer, stopping any attempt he might have made at speech. As he pulled, Mikhailo pushed himself off the tree and moved forward, a little uncoordinated, and Sasha instinctively brought his arm around him to keep him from falling over.

Mikhailo didn’t know whether he felt released from the nerve-wracking pressure of his first kiss, because that _had_ been his first, or if the alcohol had finally settled his frayed nerves, or that the lack of people staring at them allowed him to relax, or because the sound of the wind blowing through rustling leaves drowned out his father’s voice in the back of his head, or if it was the surprised look in Sasha’s familiar brown eyes that set him at ease. Try as he might later that evening, and the next day, and many more times after that, he wouldn’t be able to recall the exact moment his breath caught in his throat, his heart stopping for a single second as he finally realized something he should have seen coming a long time ago.

From up close in their somewhat awkward embrace, he looked up to find Sasha’s cheeks flushed, his jaw clenched tightly, nostrils flared as his breathing was picking up. His earlier cockiness and flippant attitude dissolved into a dangerous stillness. His seemingly neutral expression revealed more about the control Sasha was so painfully exerting over himself than he would ever admit to, as if he were trying not to ruin the moment or snap Mikhailo out of whatever mindset he was in, doing his utmost best not to scare the animal caught in the headlights even if he couldn’t tell whether it was a deer or a wolf.

With his blue eyes wide open, Mikhailo leaned forward, softly pressing his lips to Sasha’s, chaste and innocent and unhurried, before moving away again, allowing Sasha space to catch his breath, giving him time to gauge Sasha’s reaction as his thumb stroked the tense muscles in Sasha’s neck. Sasha swallowed hard, his gaze moving between Mikhailo’s eyes and lips as his body subconsciously leaned closer, the longing bleeding from his pores almost painful to look at but reassuring at the same time.

With his hand stroking into Sasha’s short hair, Mikhailo pulled Sasha to him, their lips connecting once more, less gently though still controlled by Mikhailo even as Sasha’s arm snaked around his back to hold him close and in place. He saw Sasha’s eyes flutter shut, smiled as he felt the pressure of Sasha’s lips on his, Sasha’s tongue on his lower lip, and then gripped Sasha’s neck like a puppy, pulling them as far apart as Sasha’s arm would let him. Foreheads still touching, brown eyes glaring into blue, breathing each other’s breath, Sasha let out a low groan of frustration, his hand pressing flat on Mikhailo’s back, fingers tingling as he debated whether to hold Mikhailo closer or push him away.

With his thumb stroking Sasha’s neck, Mikhailo shut his eyes, just listening to their combined breaths, to the wind blowing through the forest, to the deafening sound of his heart beating in his ears drowning out every thought. He felt Sasha’s fingers flexing on his back, heard him take a deep breath, and then another.

“I’d go to Romania with you,” Sasha whispered.

With his breath caught in his throat, Mikhailo slowly opened his eyes and looked up into Sasha’s, who gave him a watery smile before looking away and licking his lips nervously.

“But, you know,” Sasha continued quickly, voice cracking slightly, the hand on Mikhailo’s back moving to stroke his waist instead, “we’d have to go tell Myla we’re all defecting because otherwise she’d come after us and kill you.”

Mikhailo let out a bark of laughter at Sasha’s ridiculous statement, his whole body shaking as he dissolved into giggles, the tension rushing out of his body, and then lost his balance and stumbled a few steps backward until his back hit a tree trunk. Slightly dumbfounded at the unexpected reaction, Sasha was slow to react, only catching Mikhailo right before gravity started pulling him down the tree trunk, holding him up underneath his armpits and pinning him to the tree.

Mikhailo smirked, grabbing Sasha by the neck and pulling him into a kiss, all smiles and hungry tongues, roaming hands and soft moans, two boys with lowered inhibitions and copious amounts of hormones racing through their veins as whatever had previously separated them dissipated. It took them a while before rational thought returned, and upon reminding themselves that sneaking into the Institute before sunrise was much easier than after, they managed to reach the Institute’s main building about an hour later, stumbling from one tree trunk to the next with at least one body part touching the other person, an innocence between them even as one slammed the other into whatever surface was available so they could continue making out.

However, once they were in sight of the Institute, Mikhailo started tensing up again, the alcohol no longer enough to suppress his father’s voice in his head, Sasha’s smile fading quickly as Mikhailo softly pushed his hand away and placed more distance between them.

“We have to ehm…” he started, trying to control his sudden fidgeting, nausea creeping up in his throat, “I’m going East. Around the building, I’ll go East.”

Sasha frowned, his hand reaching out until Mikhailo visibly shrank away and he dropped it with a deep sigh instead.

“You know it’s okay, right? No one will think less of you,” he snorted, “hell, no one even cares, not even Maria. Myla definitely won’t care either.”

Unfortunately, that had the opposite effect on Mikhailo as what Sasha had intended. As if he had physically struck him, Mikhailo whipped his head around in anger, his face reddening as he glared at Sasha, his hands clenching.

“Nothing happened,” he hissed at him, blue eyes drilling holes into Sasha’s eyes, “nothing happened and this was a mistake, and you will _not_ mention this to _anyone!_ ”

“Mik, what are--”

“Don’t touch me!” Mikhailo snapped, pushing Sasha away from him and walking towards the building.

Without turning back, he walked East, belatedly remembering that it was way beyond curfew and he should be sneaking in instead of stomping his way through the grounds. With his heart beating in his ears, he marched on with fog in his head, stopping twice to catch his breath so he wouldn’t hyperventilate, finding his way on muscle memory alone. He somehow made it back to his room and bed without getting caught, and with trembling hands, he took off his clothes and hid them underneath his mattress like a guilty treasure. He roughly ran his hands through his hair to remove any dirt or leaves that had ended up there, then climbed into bed.

Lying in bed and blindly staring at the ceiling as a light hangover banged around in his skull, he heard the bustling of the early risers getting up with the sun to start their chores or attack breakfast. He had no chores to attend to, no obligations until after noon that day so he just stayed in bed, skipping breakfast and drinking water instead. Exhaustion pulled him into short, restless naps, and he woke up several times with his hands clenching and unclenching at his side, images whirling around in his brain. He angrily wiped away the single tear that had managed to escape his rapidly blinking eyes and glared at the clock until he forced himself to get up for his afternoon training.

The remainder of that day and the days following passed in a bit of a haze; Myla pulling him out of bed, dragging him from one training session to the next study group, forcing him to eat and focus on his scores and ranking as the last elimination round loomed over everyone’s head. He only saw Sasha a few times in passing, in the food hall, once in training, and though Myla didn’t ask what was going on, he wasn’t subtle enough for her not to have figured out that his sudden dark and broody mood had something to do with his best friend.

Unlike her brother, Sasha very brilliantly managed to avoid bumping into Myla at any point in time where she could corner him for more information, or simply to beat him up. This included eating breakfast at an exuberantly early time, having lunch with a study group in the forest, dinner closest to a table with professors, and sleeping in someone else’s room on the night that she picked his lock. She knew something was up, could clearly see him staring at Mikhailo from a distance, smiling at him in hallways like he felt guilty about something, but he apparently didn’t want Myla present for whatever conversation he wanted to have with her brother whereas Mikhailo had apparently decided to stick to her like glue. So after glaring at Sasha’s empty bed for a minute, she left and came back 10 minutes later with a raw egg that she gingerly placed within his pillowcase for future revenge, a message she knew he would receive. Then she went back to her own room, worrying about whatever could have happened between her brother and Sasha that made them act like a stoned koala and a skittish rat, respectively.

The set date of the elimination rounds came and went, yet no rounds took place. A significant amount of gossip floated around about how Maria had cancelled the rounds because their section was too elite and she wanted to keep everyone, how the rounds in another Institute had gone spectacularly wrong and blown up the entire building, and how they were waiting for a number of professional snipers to come from Romania to pick off any weaklings. Because of all the wild theories, and the fact that no elimination round of theirs had ever been cancelled before, the entire Institute was on edge.

Unlike many other students, Myla was sure that the supposed cancellation was part of the game, that they were already within an elimination round without knowing it, that Maria’s last round would be weeding out the weak in a different way. As Mikhailo’s catatonic state transformed into a more manageable moody-and-broodiness, she made sure that he was well aware of her suspicions, about 3 times a day if he let her, and kept him on his toes for whatever part of the game was to come. She dragged his mattress into her room, set a booby trap in her doorway, and slept with Anton’s switchblade and a big rock underneath her pillow.

Which is how Sasha found himself almost choking to death on her contraption with a rock sailing towards his stomach.

“What the --hold still, I can’t cut the rope if you’re moving-- what the _fuck_ are you doing here, Nozhin,” Myla hissed at Sasha, who was tugging on the rope and coughing softly so as not to wake up anyone in the hall.

Once she cut the noose from his neck, he flung the rope away from him with one hand and closed Myla’s door with the other, leaning against it to catch his breath, still wearing the yellow shirt and light jeans he had worn at dinner that night. Myla waited with crossed arms for him to breathe properly again.

“What the hell are you doing killing anyone entering your door, Milkovich?!” Sasha replied in between pathetic coughs, his voice a little more hoarse than usual.

“I’m staying prepared for the rounds, what the fuck are you doing here.”

“Clearly trying to get myself killed before your rounds even start, for fuck’s sake, Myla...”

He trailed off as he noticed Mikhailo’s blue eyes peeking over his covers on the mattress on the floor and suddenly became mighty interested in the top of Myla’s head. In turn, Myla took a very deep breath and decided that gutting Sasha where he stood was going to make her room smell like copper for too long and she wasn’t in the mood to clean up all those guts.

Sasha cleared his throat.

“Can I ehm-- talk to you?” he whispered. “Alone?”

Myla suppressed a smirk at his puppy eyes. She knew him showing up out of the blue, at night and in her room of all places, was probably because he was just as exasperated with her brother’s cat-and-mouse game as she was, or maybe because his pillow still smelled like rotten egg. Still, her curiousity was piqued and her patience and understanding at her brother’s teenage brooding and lack of communication about whatever problem was going on between him and Sasha had worn scarily thin to the point of perpetual annoyance.

Usually, she would have solved the issue by bringing both boys into a room together and yelling her head off until they begrudgingly worked out whatever pitiful issue they had going on. However, neither boy had so far told her what was going on, and because of the upcoming rounds’ draining nature, she had decided to save the wrath of her anger for after the rounds were done because her outbursts tended to send Mikhailo moping for a few days and Sasha fake-happy, which would annoy her even more and make working together almost unmanageable. But if her brother wasn’t willing to talk to her, Sasha was the next best thing. And if Sasha didn’t want to talk about what she wanted to hear, it was still the perfect opportunity for beating the information out of him.

She feigned a deep sigh, turned around and took off her nightgown to reveal a tank top and shorts underneath. She grabbed her sweatpants lying next to the bed and shimmied into them before pulling a long-sleeved black shirt over her tank top. Her shoes were next, and by the time she had the switchblade, baton and a plastic syringe with the regular dose of tranquilizer-antidote Mikhailo had made hidden into her pants, Sasha was heavily sighing in exasperation.

“This isn’t a fashion show, Myla, we’re not on a mission here.”

Myla snorted, checking her equipment once more before she reached for the door. As she did, three gunshots went off, and all three kids in the room froze. Sasha pushed Myla to the ground and away from the door but she pushed him off of her, crawling towards the door and opening it a little to look outside. In the hallway, dozens of kids were peeking out their doors like she was, drowsy and confused, a heavy silence descending upon them all.

Myla turned around and tugged on Mikhailo’s blankets, and Sasha took her place in the doorway to keep tabs on what was going on.

“Get the fuck up, it’s the rounds!” she hissed, pulling the blankets off his sleepy body, “Put on your pants, hurry up!”

Slightly slower than she would have liked, Mikhailo dragged the jeans and a black shirt that Myla had stacked next to his mattress towards him, dressing quickly before tugging on his shoes. As he was tying his laces, a booming siren deafened the hallway for a few seconds, followed by a PA system coming to life with a loud cracking sound, and then Maria’s voice.

“All students report to the atrium in 90 seconds. Anyone who isn’t inside the atrium in 90 seconds is disqualified from the elimination rounds.”

She didn’t repeat the message.

Without a word, Sasha, Myla, and Mikhailo scrambled off the floor and threw open the door, bursting into the hallway and running full-speed towards the East facing doors. They were one of the first to react, but kids were running out of their bedrooms in PJs and bare feet, hopping to get their shoes on, or stumbling into the walls as someone pushed them aside. A window shattered as someone jumped through it to get outside, but they ran, Sasha’s long legs bringing him up front, Myla and Mikhailo close behind him, out the doors, down the stairs and into the dark night.

Just before they cleared the last step, Myla pulled both boys to the left, avoiding the strange reflections she saw on the bottom of the stairs. The kids directly following them copied her, but the ones that went straight ahead encountered the marbles on the ground and went down, a domino effect ensuing.

As they ran on to the atrium, which was no more than 200 meters removed from both the East and West doors, at least 10 kids were already sprinting ahead of them towards the light of the open doors. Suddenly, one of the kids closest to the atrium fell down flat on their face and didn’t get up, and another started frantically running in a zig-zag motion.

“Sniper!” yelled someone behind them, and Mikhailo recognized the glint of a scope on top of the atrium’s roof. They veered away from the open space and into the trees surrounding the atrium, slowing down their pace in case they encountered another boobytrap or attack, and so they wouldn’t break their legs on the foliage. The siren inside the hallway boomed again and a few more kids went down near the entrance of the atrium, others running around them and through the big doors, screaming in victory.

Mikhailo kept track of the people falling, of the sniper’s rhythm, of the number of darts he knew were in the tranquilizer guns used by the Institute, and when he saw a change in the rhythm wherein the sniper must have been reloading, he ran back into the open space, sprinting straight for the doors, Sasha and Myla close on his heels. The three of them darted into the atrium, looking around to catch their bearings. The previously open space was transformed into a maze of metal construction with multiple levels, hiding spots and flickering lights. Kids were quietly running around the maze, hiding or trying to find a strategic location, looking for friends and foes.

On the wall next to the door stood a table with guns, guarded by their combat instructor, holding two guns aimed forward, a neutral expression on his face. Myla ran up to him, looking him in the eye as she slowly reached for two of the guns. He raised one eyebrow and slightly tilted his head, so she lifted up one empty hand and placed the other on a handgun. His face went back to neutral and she took the handgun, Sasha behind her grabbing a single handgun as well, Mikhailo a rifle. They checked the guns to find them unloaded and then kept walking along the wall until the way split into three corridors and a ladder going upward. A loud siren went off and the atrium doors banged shut amid the screams of a few kids who were a split second too late.

Maria’s voice boomed through the atrium. “This elimination round will last 5 minutes. Other than hand-to-hand combat, your only weapons are the guns and tranquilizers provided. Do not shoot or fight to kill or permanently maim or you will be eliminated. Do not shoot or fight the coaches or you will be eliminated. Your goal is survival. The ones standing on their own volition after 5 minutes will remain.”

Stuffing the rifle in the front of his shirt, Mikhailo climbed up the ladder, leaving Myla and Sasha on the bottom floor. A commotion broke out on the third level of the maze and magazines of ammo came falling down, dropping down to the second level and some bouncing off to the bottom floor. Mikhailo ran to the pile of ammo on the second level while pulling the rifle out of his shirt, grabbing one that bounced close to him as Myla and Sasha ran away from the horde of kids descending upon the few that had fallen to the bottom floor. As they made it to the other side of the atrium, ammo came falling down there as well and they snagged 4 magazines each, loading the guns and shooting anyone they could see on the bottom floor as they ran away again.

Mikhailo climbed to the third level and stalked around slowly, his shoes moving silently over the metal construction, rifle loaded and finger on the trigger. After the ammo had been taken, most people had fled to the second level or bottom floor because the top level didn’t have many good hiding places. However, he knew of at least 5 more people that preferred sniping over close combat, and they would most likely be on the top level if they reached the atrium in time.

A soft scuffle and a movement in the corner of his eye had Mikhailo dropping down, a tranquilizer dart zipping close to his head. Whoever had tried to shoot him ran away but a dart hit them in the back as they ran, and they went down. As Mikhailo got back up slowly, Faina came strutting up the ladder in figure-hugging black clothes and shoes, her blonde hair tied back and hidden under a black bandana, and her rifle pointed in his general direction. She winked at him as she passed by, walking to the person on the floor and pocketing their handgun. She then turned around, her rifle lowered but finger still on the trigger.

“You watch my back, I’ll watch yours?” she asked, a dangerous lilt to her voice.

He knew he couldn’t completely trust her and neither could she him, but as long as his being around benefitted her, she had a reason to keep him awake. And unless she hadn’t known it was him on the floor being shot at, she had already proven to have his back.

He stared at her for a second, then two, debating the benefits. Her trigger-finger twitched at his silence.

“This round isn’t about trust, Milkovich, just survival,” Faina continued, slightly on edge the longer they were standing still. “I’ve seen your scores, I know how good you are. As long as you don’t shoot Maryna or Evita, we’re good. I’ll promise not to target your sister.”

“Deal.” He nodded at her, and a smirk spread out over her face.

“Wonderful!” Her cheeks red with excitement, she grabbed the handgun and stuck the rifle in the back of her shirt. “Let’s clear this area first and then there are 3 snipers on the second level I want you to get rid off.”

Downstairs, Myla and Sasha were in constant motion, hiding and running and shooting and hiding again. They had taken a dark blue jacket off of an unconscious kid to cover Sasha’s yellow shirt and rubbed dirt all over his light jeans despite Sasha’s suggestion to let him run around naked as a shock factor. As they were huddled together in a little hiding spot, it struck Myla that Mikhailo was on his own, without her to protect him, and her heart started to beat faster, her breath picking up.

“Why did he leave,” she mumbled as she looked around towards the higher levels, hoping to find her brother.

“Hey, no, Myla, look at me,” Sasha whispered, waving in front of her face, “it’s fine, he’ll be fine!”

Myla shook her head frantically, “What did you do to him! We need to go back, I can’t protect him from here!”

Myla punched Sasha in the stomach, but from their close proximity, she couldn’t put any weight into the hit. However, she managed to catch Sasha off-balance and pushed him out of their hiding place, running off and trying to remember where she had seen a ladder. She ran around a corner and straight into another student. They were both stunned for a second, and it wasn’t until Sasha rounded the corner right behind her and shot the guy in his chest that Myla snapped out of her haze.

She ran forward again, gun first, around another corner, shooting two people as she went, knocking out a third who tried to jump her. With her face reddening and her heart beating in her ears, she was looking up, around, shooting anything that moved, trusting Sasha to have her back despite the fact that she wanted to kill him. Suddenly, all the lights in the atrium turned up brightly, and a moment later turned off. Blinded, Myla was pulled backward and into a corner, a body moving to stand in front of hers.

“Can you see yet?” Sasha whispered, and she shook her head.

“Bitch move, Maria,” she grumbled, blinking her eyes into the darkness and calming down her breathing. A hush fell over the atrium and though she heard whispering in her vicinity, she couldn’t yet make out where it came from.

“How much ammo do you have left?” Sasha continued, and she could finally see his outline in front of her, arms stretched out, head moving quickly to keep all angles covered.

“Why aren’t you blinded?” she asked while checking her gun and magazines, counting her darts in her head.

“I figured they’d do something like this. There’s a massive strobe light on the ceiling, they’re gonna fuck us up with that later on too.”

“A what?”

“You know, the thing they have in discos where the light turns on and off…”

“I didn’t know you were born in the 50s.”

Sasha snorted, then took a shot at someone that went wide, giving away their location.

“Alright, gotta move,” he said, pushing Myla to the right as he covered their exit.

They moved in silence, only once accidentally kicking a kid that lay unconscious on the floor before a coach came to take him away. Myla heard a grunt from up high and whipped her head around to find a girl on the third level fighting off two people. A sniper picked off someone on the second level, but she couldn’t find his location, and just then, as Sasha had predicted, the strobe light turned on.

Bent low, they slowly stalked on around a corner, the strobe light making it hard to see clearly. They waited, back to back, checking their angles until Sasha gave Myla the all-clear. Myla turned around, disarmed Sasha and pushed him against the wall before walking a few steps away with both guns pointed at his chest.

"I have 21 rounds in these guns," she said, her voice stone-cold. "Tell me what you did to my brother."

Up on the third level, Mikhailo grumbled at all the noise next to him, trying to pick out the last sniper on the second level as Faina crunched her elbow into someone’s head. The darkness hadn’t bothered him so much because it revealed a sniper’s location better than the soft lighting had, but the strobe light was the most annoying piece of shit equipment he had ever come across in his short little lifetime, screwing with his timing and eyesight. He crawled a few meters sideways to change his angle and be further away from the fighting, keeping an eye out on the last second level sniper. Finally, Faina managed to shoot the second guy with his own gun and slowly dropped him so he wouldn’t break his leg. She returned to place a handgun next to Mikhailo before pulling both unconscious guys to the wall of the level so they wouldn’t be in their way. So far, she had been an excellent team player.

A familiar movement pulled his awareness away from the second level sniper to the bottom floor, and he saw Myla panting, her small figure focussed entirely on the person against the wall that she was pointing two guns at. It bothered him that she was perfectly aligned with his line of sight on his level and probably the one below. He quickly looked around the second level but he couldn’t see the other sniper with the strobe light on. He looked back at Myla, glancing through his scope as he tried to identify her victim, and as the guy walked forward, Mikhailo recognized Sasha’s shoes, his stance, his empty hands halfway raised in surrender, the frown on his face. Suddenly, Myla’s straight back and heavy breathing made more sense. He would call her his little lion whenever she was at that level of rage, the type of rage that she would cultivate for days until she saw an opportune moment to explode and just completely go off on that person. However, she had no recent reason to be angry at Sasha, because Sasha hadn’t been around much since--

Since that night.

_Oh, shit._

Mikhailo’s blood pressure skyrocketed, and the sound all around him turning to a soft buzz, like he was a moth trapped in a light bulb. He knew he should keep track of the second sniper, of anyone else coming up the ladder, of anyone at all that could threaten him and Faina, but all rational thought had departed the building as he tried to read Sasha’s lips through his scope. As he waited for Sasha to say that hateful word.

“Myla, relax, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“When has anyone ever relaxed because someone told them to do so, Nohzin,” she hissed back, and placed her index fingers on the triggers. “Answer the fucking question.”

“I can’t, it’s… it’s not my place,” Sasha grimaced and licked his lips, looking from the guns to Myla’s white face and back.

“What. Did. You. _Do_.”

“Myla, please. I didn’t do anything against his will. He’s just… you’ll have to ask him.”

Myla took a deep breath and moved the left gun a little more to the side, firing a shot before moving the guns back to chest-height.

“Last chance, Sasha.”

Sasha exhaled through his teeth, a bead of sweat rolling down his face, anger and fear and something else flitting behind his eyes as he debated what he could and couldn’t say.

“Look, it was just a kiss,” he whispered, his voice wavering. “And then a few more, and-- I don’t know, he just completely freaked out, won’t talk to me, won’t fucking _look_ at me, as if it’s my fucking fault.” Sasha groaned and waved one hand in frustration. “I don’t _know_ , Myla. I mean, he _is_ a very sexually repressed individual, so it could be that, but I think he's just g--”

The sudden and loud sound of firecrackers exploding nearby made Myla jump as she’d been intensely focussed on Sasha, and two darts appeared in the middle of his chest. Sasha’s mouth fell open and his eyes went wide as he slowly looked from Myla’s shocked face and the two guns pointed at his chest to the two colorful feathers sticking out of the front of his shirt.

His body wavered as the tranquilizers took effect, and Myla dropped her guns and ran up to catch his limp body before gravity mercilessly pulled him down, moving with him until he laid crooked in her lap, tugging the darts out of his chest as soon as she could. She fumbled in her pants pocket for the antidote she carried with her, ripping the cap off with her teeth and jabbing the needle in Sasha’s bicep. As she slowly injected the liquid into his body, she worried that the dosage in the syringe wouldn’t be enough to counteract two darts before the round was done, worried that she couldn’t guarantee that the two darts in his chest hadn’t come from her guns, worried that she might have done more damage than she had intended, worried what her brother might say or do when Sasha was gone, worried where Sasha would go.

A tear rolled down her face as she slowly rocked Sasha back and forth, humming a song her mom used to sing. She silently urged the antidote to work faster, holding Sasha’s head up and patting his cheeks. But before Sasha regained consciousness, the lights came back on and the 5-minute alarm went off. Some of the ones left standing yelled in victory, and the rounds had finished.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My eternal thanks to my amazing beta <3
> 
> As a translation, "ça va être qui le chanceux ce soir?" means "who will be the lucky guy tonight?"


	5. Like Shooting Ducks in a Barrel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mandy would be damned if everything was about to get fucking ruined by _men_.  
>  Her plan had been solid, and in theory, if nothing had gone wrong, it couldn’t have failed.  
> But man plans and God laughs, and nothing turned out the way it should have.  
> 

The essence of tradition is repetition. Their mother used to say that whenever her kids whined about going to church or eating borshch and stuffed cabbage roll on Christmas or waiting to open their meager birthday presents until after dinner. The essence of tradition is repetition. It was one of the only things Mandy really remembered of Mama Milkovich, the only sentence she could hear her mom’s voice say in her head.

Since then, she and Mickey had created their own traditions, accidentally imposed or willfully sought out. One of the most important ones was that they celebrated Christmas on December 25th with any friends or business partners that were around, but on January 6th, Mandy would sleep over at Mickey’s house. The next day, on Ukrainian Christmas, he’d make borshch, pierogi, guliash and her ultimate favorite, deruny: potato pancakes with sour cream. She would take care of the traditional Ukrainian wine their mother used to like so much and at night, she’d attempt to make Ukrainian donuts, pampushky, that she would inevitably over-fry and then smother in icing sugar. They would spend the whole day together, not leaving the house, eating and drinking, speaking their native tongue, and watching old movies. They would call each other by their given names, laugh and cry and be obnoxiously loud, and would feel a little like the children they never were, like the family they had been forced to abandon.

And on January 8th, everything would be back to normal. Blue-eyed Michael Davis and blonde Amanda Miller, all-American cousins, born and raised in the land of the free, but only if you were rich. Just your average Joe and Jane, nothing interesting to see here, please proceed.

It sometimes nagged at her, the need for a double life, the fact that she had survived things people couldn’t even dream of, but then she’d take a nice long look at her life and her brother and her bank account, and swallow her self-pity. After all, she could have ended up dead by her father’s hand or in a whore house as well.

Their second most important tradition was violating all the rules and regulations at an amusement park in Brooklyn at least once per summer so they could plunder all the games of their best plushies and eat the weirdest fried foods they came across.

In their first year in the US, Mandy’s first real American date had been with Richard Jameson, some hot guy who had chatted her up at a coffee shop in LA. For their date, he had been creative enough to take her to the amusement park just outside of town, one of those with shooting games and petting zoos. Not trusting the young man’s intentions and also being bored out of his skull, Mickey followed them there, stalking them for all of 15 minutes before Mandy found him subtly lurking.

However, Mandy didn’t care about her second shadow. Her inner child came bubbling up and bursting out, causing her to squeal in delight at baby goats and teacup pigs, dragging her date from food stand to food stand, going through the Hall of Horrors twice just to see Dick cringe. It became very apparent that Dick’s ego couldn’t handle Mandy’s genuine delight in getting her face painted, beating him in every single shooting game they played and petting miniature ponies and bunnies. She was far too excited about the whole experience and not in the slightest bit interested in the random bits of clever information he was trying to impress her with that she forgot to stroke his ego or pretend to care.

57 minutes, a kiddie ride, 3 rounds of the petting zoo, 5 variations of fried foods and 6 shooting games into the date, Dick received an ‘emergency call’ and had to urgently leave to deal with a super-important family crisis. Mandy smiled sweetly, her arms filled with plushies as she tried not to get cotton candy all over her face if only because it was sticky, the cash from Dick’s wallet in her back pocket ever since he had started looking at his phone 10 minutes earlier. With a half-hearted wave goodbye he walked off, and Mandy whistled to Mickey so he wouldn’t follow him and break his wrist in a dark alley or something. Instead, she gave him her leftover cotton candy, pulled a $20 out of her pocket and dragged him to the nearest shooting game they could find.

And they purged the place. They went by every single shooting game there was until the sight of their winnings struck fear into the eyes of men. 3 hours later, they were subsequently banned from that particular amusement park and escorted from the premises, even if no one could prove that they had cheated the games in any way, shape or form. The siblings walked out of the park voluntarily, sunburned and sugar high, grinning from ear to ear as if they’d beat the house at a casino, holding 3 large bags of plushies each, enough to fill a small room with.

Not in a hurry to get home, they took the long road to the metro station, walking through a few poor neighbourhoods until they passed by a kindergarten with paint peeling off the walls and an old, washed out jungle gym in the yard. The siblings looked at each other and without a word, backpedaled it to the kindergarten. Disregarding the fact that they were in plain sight on a weekend when the kindergarten was clearly closed with no plausible reason to be there, Mickey picked the front door’s lock as Mandy carefully balanced too many bags of plushies in her arms. Once opened, they walked through the old building, peering into the small rooms with the tiny chairs and worn toys. After they were unable to figure out whether there was an age distribution in the rooms, they distributed the plushies by size, all except for one snow tiger for Mandy and an emerald dragon for Mickey. That night, Mickey happily crashed on Mandy’s couch, and Mandy made them breakfast in the morning.

Since then, it had become tradition for them to rob from the amusement parks and give to the kids at least once per summer, in whichever city they lived in at that point in time. Since moving to Manhattan, they had found a nice variation of amusement parks in both Brooklyn and Queens, moving from one to another so they wouldn’t be remembered too easily. It was a wholesome, almost peaceful retreat from their other lives, a way to replace all those times they hadn’t been allowed to have childish fun in their childhoods.

And Mandy would be damned if it was about to get fucking ruined by _men._

Her plan had been solid, and in theory, if nothing had gone wrong, it couldn’t have failed. But man plans and God laughs, and nothing turned out the way it should have.

In Mandy’s defense, the yearly pilgrimage to their sacred and serene outing of innocent mass-slaughter was one of the only times that Mickey was completely and utterly _happy_ , just relaxed and living in the moment, the anonymity of the crowd bringing down their otherwise flaming paranoia to a warm ember. Furthermore, the best moments for introducing a new person to Mickey were when he was calm and in high spirits, and such moments were few and far between. So, in theory, bringing Ian along to the amusement park should have been the perfect mix of a casual date, carefree happiness and male-bonding over targets shot. Or so she had envisioned it.

Instead, Mickey had been forced to go dark and came back cranky and distracted, brooding a few seats down and sneaking sips from a miniature vodka bottle Mandy recognized as hers, Ian was borderline ignoring her brother while being incredibly attentive to her, and her patience was wearing ridiculously thin at both the implosion of her perfectly crafted daydream and their juvenile behavior even before they got off the subway in Brooklyn.

She took another deep breath and smiled at something Ian said, not even remotely paying attention anymore in order to calm the murderous thoughts in her head. She hadn’t decided who to kill first yet, but the method of choice would be long and painful. Exsanguination came to mind. Maybe flaying. She would always keep the door open to poison but she had forgotten to bring her stash. Her hand slowly caressed the karambit claw she kept on her thigh, and she saw Mickey sit a little straighter as a consequence. At least _one_ of the two men could read her mood correctly.

The subway announced their stop and both Mandy and Mickey shot out of their seats, leaving Ian a little perplexed as they moved in unison towards the doors. A smile ghosted over Mickey’s face for just a moment but Mandy’s heart practically burst from happiness as her mood lifted, knowing that a mischievous boy was trying to claw his way out of her brother’s dark and broody mood.

After power walking from the subway to the park, they presented their tickets and walked through the park’s gates, Ian trailing behind the siblings.

“So ehm,” the redhead looked around, “what are we doing first? Do you want to--”

“Ducks!” Mandy shouted and without waiting for the boys, she moved through the crowd towards a bright yellow booth, a giddiness in her step.

Mickey grinned at Ian, whose helpless gaze was following Mandy’s excitedly walking form.

“She just really likes shooting ducks,” he helpfully elaborated before walking after her.

The three adults stood in line behind a few parents and children, Mandy trying her best not to glare down a teenager that had raised his eyebrows at her. She moved from foot to foot to the beat of the music, then stopped herself when she was on the verge of bouncing as the line moved. As she faced forward, away from the men, her face flushed cold as she briefly considered Ian’s reaction to both her and Mickey’s marksmanship, to the possibility of him figuring something, anything out, of catching them in a lie, confronting her with her double life. She considered if maybe, just this once, it would be better if she toned it all down and tried _not_ to win all the plushies.

But she let it all wash over her, let the dread and doubt bring her back down to earth. She had been MM for almost half her life and Mandy for half a decade, had been living and working and interacting with the general public, artists, buyers, sellers of fine art, and government officials for long enough that daytime-Mandy came naturally to her. Outside people didn’t recognize her quirks as subtle paranoia or overcautious behavior, and marksmanship in America was generally chalked down as having had gun-loving parents, which had worked just fine for them so far. She took a deep breath, then another, and the loud quacking sound coming from the game made her smile a little.

“So I take it you guys come here often?” Ian casually commented, unaware of Mandy’s inner turmoil.

“Not here specifically,” replied Mickey, “but it’s an annual thing we do. It’s all fun and games but ultimately, it’s really just a stress-test for your stomach.”

“Guess I should have brought my insulin pen. Or a child.”

“Do you have any children?” Mickey retorted, and Mandy heard a dangerous tilt in his voice that made her want to glare at him, but she stopped herself from turning around.

“Oh god no, absolutely not.” Ian laughed, “Do you?”

The line moved, and Mandy peaked over her shoulder at the two men seemingly engaged in a polite enough conversation albeit that the tension between them felt like cotton candy to the face. Which, to set the record straight, had only happened once, and hadn’t been her fault.

“Nah,” Mickey shrugged, “Mandy is enough of a child to fill that dark void forever.”

Head cocked, lips pursed, green eyes wide and eyebrows raised high on her forehead, Mandy turned around slowly to glare at her brother, pointing two fingers at her eyes and then his.

“I will fuck you _up_ ,” she stage-whispered loud enough for the mother standing behind them to glare at her, and Mandy smiled sweetly at her before glaring again at her brother.

“See what I mean!” Mickey directed to Ian.

“Next in line!” yelled the Duck attendant, which was the only thing keeping Mandy from leaning forward and choking the shit-eating grin off of Mickey’s bastardly face.

The duck shooting was done with 4 people at the same time, but Mandy paid for all 4 and took the first two guns, leaving the boys to sit side-by-side with a single one. Mickey cocked an eyebrow at her but she shrugged, having gotten over her minor ‘what if Ian figures out we’re Mr. and Mrs. Smith through shooting ducks at a fair’ freak-out. She could already hear Mickey laugh at her, telling her that she _wished_ she looked like Angelina Jolie.

Instead, she vowed not to act _too_ daytime-persona-Mandy around Ian, and a little more _true_ Myla/Mandy, because, well, she was trying to see if she could keep him for longer than a few weeks. Which, if she was being honest with herself, was a far better reason to freak out over.

And she _did_ wish that she looked like Angelina Jolie.

The bell rang, and with loud quacking noises, 3 ducks randomly appeared on the blue backdrop. Mickey and Mandy fired, and all 3 ducks were gone. Another 3 appeared and were just as easily dispatched. Then 5 were put up, and Ian finally got a chance to try to shoot one as Mickey and Mandy fought over the others.

With one hand, Mickey jostled Mandy’s left shoulder as he kept shooting with the other.

“Ohh Mickey my boy,” she hissed at him, “I will kick your balls so hard, your mother is gonna feel menstrual cramps in her _grave_.” Not taking her eyes off the yellow cardboard, still managing to hit 2 of the 4 ducks with her right gun.

“Can’t believe you’d disrespect your favorite auntie like that,” Mickey chuckled and shoved her again as 6 ducks appeared.

“Let me read you your future, bitch,” she spat, hitting one duck with her left even as she compensated with her right gun, “watch out for cotton candy cones for one may be disappearing into your trachea later.”

Ian snorted but Mickey roared with laughter, almost falling off his chair if Ian hadn’t caught him slipping as Mandy shot the last duck before the buzzer went off. The Duck attendant walked over to her with a cute, white bear, and she cocked her head at him, a single eyebrow raised.

“You mean to say that I did _not_ shoot enough ducks for that purple unicorn up there?” she said, pointing upwards with her two guns.

He sighed and turned around, putting down the bear and grabbing a hook to fish the purple unicorn Mandy wanted from up top. With a clenched jaw, he handed her the plushie and immediately yelled “next in line!”

“ _T_ _haaank_ you!” Mandy crooned, winking at the attendant as she walked away, pushing Mickey and Ian in front of her so they’d move towards the cotton candy stand.

Smirking, Mickey turned to Ian, who was trying to figure out what Mandy was aiming for. “Did she not mention she was a _tiny_ bit competitive?”

“That may have gotten lost in some detail on art history or the other,” Ian replied distractedly.

Mickey clapped Ian on the shoulder, smiling as he walked after his sister. “You’re doing great, man. Just watch your back when she’s got an empty cotton candy cone in her hands.”

 

* * *

 

A pink cloud of cotton candy, 8 fried Oreos, a stick of fried butter, 3 beers, a hot dog, and a bucket of freshly baked cookies shared between them later, Mickey was finally feeling the happy and relaxing effects of 5 mini bottles of vodka on an empty stomach subside and turn into mild nausea. He knew Mandy would chew him out over it later, though he doubted that she had caught him more than once, but alcohol had been the quickest way he could think of for his mood to lighten up so he wouldn’t ruin her fun with all his internal hot-mystery-man-Ian-dating-my-sister-and-didn’t-even-recognize-me-drama going on. He may have laughed and smiled a bit too much, possibly touched Ian in too brotherly of a manner once or twice, but Mandy seemed happy and Ian didn’t know any better to notice something being off.

“So what’s next?” asked Ian again, a big smile on his face, a little flushed from the alcohol. For a tall guy, he got tipsy very easily. Daydreams of Mickey drinking Ian under the table played out in the back of his head. Maybe he could ask him a few questions that he was dying to know the answer to, like what the hell had happened in that ballroom a week or so ago. Maybe he could just suck him off. Maybe he could stop lusting after his sister’s boytoy.

Mickey refocused his attention to Mandy and her 8-plushies-in-a-bag, who was slowly scanning the area, looking for her next fix. He saw her backtrack over a woman, 2 young girls and a prepubescent boy standing nearby, a tired but happy smile on her face, her dark skin hiding the fading bruise on her right eye. The children were wearing old but well-maintained clothes and were each holding the cheapest popsicle available in the park, the girls excitedly talking and pointing at different things they wanted to do. The woman was looking around, squinting to see the prices at the stands and activities. Something about her mannerism nagged at Mickey, from the defeated look in eyes when she read the prices to the sad smile on her face as bent down to address her children.

“Who wants to pet some ponies?” the mother suggested.

“But I want to play in the cars!” the oldest boy huffed, and Mickey could almost see his own mother and oldest brother standing there, Yosyf’s small fists clenched as their one chance of playing in the cars at the carnival was getting ruined by stupid animals and their mother’s lack of money. Their dad had been on a bender and Mandy had been playing at a neighbour’s house, so it had been just her and her boys, dressed in their second-best clothes so other people didn’t know how poor they were. His mother’s long, dark hair covered up the worst of the bruises in her neck, but her sons knew what those dark spots were even if the other people pretended not to notice. Not soon after that day, another set of those bruises would prove to be fatal.

“I ehm… we can maybe do the cars later, Chris, let’s start with the ponies, okay?” the lady coaxed, and Chris crossed his arms and stomped the floor once before turning away.

As the woman slowly started walking towards the petting zoo with her daughters by the hand, Chris looked over his shoulder at the bumper cars one more time before following her, pouting as he dragged his feet.

Movement from his peripheral vision brought him eye to eye with Mandy walking by him, and for a moment he could see their mother’s face in hers as she smiled at him, a little puzzled but otherwise content. Their mother had been so young, younger than Mandy was now, and in his mind’s eye, he could finally read his mother’s agony in a way that he had never realized as a child; the exhaustion in her body, the fear for her and her children’s lives in the hard line of her lips. She looked like a damsel in distress from her old books on Slavic mythology that she kept hidden in the back of a closet in their small house, books about gods, heroes and monsters, tragic love stories and cursed existences. Books about good and evil that generally ended in death.

But that day, Kateryna had pushed her hair back and put on her beautiful smile, walking up to the circus director with him by the hand to ask if her boys could take a peek behind the scenes of the circus and see the animals. The circus director hesitated at first but Mikhailo had put on his biggest puppy-eyes and the magnificent mother-son combination had proven to be irresistible. He had called one of the runners, telling him to show the young lady and her sons around the animal enclosures, and Kateryna had almost cried in gratitude, her smile lighting up even the old grumpy circus director’s face.

Once at the animal enclosures, Yosyf and Anton had gone straight for the tigers, going as close to the cage as they dared, cussing at the tigers as if they wouldn’t shit their pants if the cage suddenly opened. Ygnat was sticking his fingers through the bars to try and touch the uninterested monkeys. Mikhailo and Kateryna had stood in front of the circus’ only elephant, the gentle grey giant with its long trunk and large ears, its droopy and watery eyes closed, its large feet shackled in short chains to the floor. It looked asleep, or at least very still, and from his low vantage point, Mikhailo had admired the vastness that was the body of the elephant, the power he imagined it must contain, the damage it could do it if ever got free. If not for its chains, the large tents of the circus would not hold against the brute force the elephant could unleash once the taste of freedom overpowered all else.

“How about the bumper cars?” Ian continued, snapping Mickey back to the present, oblivious to the childhood memories the woman had unintentionally invoked.

“I love bumper cars!” Mandy replied, her voice just a tad distracted as she looked away from Mickey.

She smiled at Ian as she gave her big bag of plushies to her brother, who raised an eyebrow and waited. Mandy sighed, grabbing her purple unicorn from the top of the bag before getting in line for the bumper cars. Ian looked over at Mickey, the obvious question on his face.

“I’ll see you guys later,” Mickey said and waved them off, “going to get some water before this stick of butter in my stomach gives me a heart attack.”

Ian grinned at him and bees burst to a painful death in Mickey’s stomach before his brain could shake off the feeling. He turned on his heel, following the mother and children to the petting zoo, fishing $40 out of his pocket as he walked, which he figured would be enough to cover at least one game for the family but not too much to make the mother suspicious and ask questions. The petting zoo was almost empty except for an older couple cooing over a little lamb and a lone father-daughter combo petting the bunnies. The woman’s girls were excitedly petting a pony and the boy was standing aside even as a baby goat rubbed its head against his knee, clearly trying to impose its dominance over the kid.

Mickey walked to the petting zoo enclosure, bag of plushies in one hand, taking his cellphone out in the other. He plastered a pleasant smile on his face and looked around as if looking for someone, motioning to Chris when their eyes met.

“Hey kid, what’s up?” he said, and from the corner of his eye, he saw the mother looking up from petting the pony.

Chris shrugged.

“We are doing a free raffle for this bag of plushies today,” he continued, nudging the bag, “do you have a ticket?”

“Yeah?” Chris replied suspiciously, checking his pockets for his ticket.

“What’s going on here?” the mother said as she dragged both girls away from the pony to check out the strange man talking to her son.

“Good afternoon ma’am,” said Mickey, “we are doing a free raffle for children in order to win this bag of plushies today. Are you his mother?”

“Yes...” she answered, clearly suspicious.

“Great, then you can play as well. Do you have your entrance tickets?”

Mickey almost grimaced at how his spiel had stopped making sense considering that the woman was clearly holding two young children by the hand and would therefore have qualified for his fake raffle regardless of the boy, but the woman didn’t point out his error and was already pulling out the content of her pockets to find her tickets. Finally, she produced 3 tickets, and the boy waved one around in Mickey’s face. With a smile, Mickey took all 4 tickets and unlocked his phone, opening his Note app and randomly scrolling while pretending to compare the ticket numbers to something on his screen. The little girls were staring up at Mickey with large brown eyes as he scrolled, one dripping her popsicle all down the front of her purple dress.

After a few tense seconds, he let out a low whistle and put his phone back in his pocket.

“Today is your lucky day, ma’am. You have two winning tickets, congratulations!”

With a big smile, he handed her the bag of plushies, and the girls jumped and squealed at the prospect of whatever was inside. The boy smiled a little as well before visibly suppressing it, but Mickey knew he was secretly interested in the content of the bag as well.

“So what’s the second price,” Chris demanded, looking from his little sisters pushing the goat away from the bag to Mickey.

With a smile, Mickey handed over the $40 and her 4 tickets to the woman, nodding at Chris and her before stepping away.

“There you go,” he said, “and enjoy the rest of your day!”

At that moment, one of the girls chose to viciously scream in the little goat’s face for trying to chew on the ear of her newly acquired plushie. The mother gave Mickey an apologetic smile before going into defense-mode, gently pushing away the goat with one hand as she lifted the open bag above her head with the other and moved towards the gates of the petting zoo, telling her kids to follow. Chris grabbed both his little sisters by the hand as one of them loudly berating the baby goat on its disrespect towards women and plushies, and Mickey smirked, satisfied with his choice of charity for the year.

On his way back to the bumper cars, he bought 3 bottles of water and a soft pretzel with cinnamon sugar, slowly munching the bread as he leaned against a bench, waiting for Mandy and Ian to finish annihilating each other and everyone else in tiny cars surrounded by protective nothingness. He hoped the starch of the bread would calm down his stomach enough to at least try the deep fried alligator he had seen earlier.

As he waited, he instinctively scanned the crowd passing him by, picking out a few pickpockets, a couple on their first date, a police officer in plain clothes with his young son. A few people looked at him as they passed him by, a group of young women giggling as they nudged each other, but Mickey ignored them, pulling his face into a neutral mask and letting the park’s overpowering sound and lights drown out his thoughts.

Just beyond the group of women, a young man was staring straight at him as he waited in line at a food stand. He seemed tense, shoulders squared, his left hand curling into a fist, uncurling and curling again before running his hand through his dark hair, pulling it back. Strange enough, he held himself with a stiffness that reminded Mickey of his father, the posture all Milkovich children learned to recognize at a young age as the calm before the storm in the moments right before their father would start yelling, throwing things or taking off his belt. The stick-of-butter-nausea in his stomach started bubbling up again and he sighed, scarfing down the pretzel and putting 2 of his bottles of water down on the bench in order to open another.

“Told you I’d find him first,” came Ian’s voice from behind him, and Mickey slowly looked over his shoulder as he drank.

“You’re a good foot taller than me, asshole, of course you were going to find his short ass before I could,” Mandy responded, carrying the purple unicorn under her arm.

Mickey flipped Mandy off with the hand holding his bottle of water as he bent down to grab the other two. Smirking, Ian took both bottles, opening one and handing it to Mandy, who accepted it with a Meaningful Look to Mickey. Mickey sighed and wished for more vodka.

“I want to try that fried alligator thing we saw earlier,” Ian said, and Mickey mentally stabbed himself as his stomach flip-flopped again. Fucking alligators.

Mandy snorted and dropped herself on the bench.

“Take Mick, I’m going to pass on eating swamp animals today. I’ll just sit on this bench until my stomach will allow me to eat that fried Oreo ice cream sandwich right _there_ ,” and she used her purple unicorn to point at the food stand where the young man had been earlier.

The thought of his father nagged in the back of his head and Mickey did a slow sweep of the food stand and the surrounding area. However, the young man was nowhere to be found, which wasn’t unusual considering the amount of time that had passed and the quick turnaround at the food stands.

“You sure?” Ian asked, and Mandy nodded. “Alright, we’ll meet up again right here with our respective swamp creatures. You coming, Mick?”

Ian turned around, and both Mandy and Mickey raised an eyebrow at each other at his casual usage of Mickey’s nickname. Mandy shrugged at Mickey, who took a deep breath and followed the tall redhead.

They walked in silence for a while, Ian on the lookout for the fried alligator place and Mickey unsure of which topic to broach with him.

“So you’re a big shot investment banker or something, right?” Mickey eventually settled on, grasping at the only reliable piece of information he actually had on Ian considering that he hadn’t spoken to his sister for a week.

“Heh,” Ian smiled at the pavement and ran his hand through his hair, “not that big of a shot, really.”

Mickey forced himself to keep breathing evenly.

“I just got started at the hedge fund,” Ian continued casually, “so for now I’m doing all the little shit jobs the big shots don’t want to do.”

He shrugged. “I also do the opening presentations to new companies and a few lectures here and there, which is fun because I get to travel and whatnot, but it takes a lot of additional time and effort to prepare those so… it’s keeping me busier than I would otherwise like to be.”

Mickey refrained from asking what other things Ian would like to get busy with.

“Ah, there it is!”

The redhead perked up, and Mickey and his guilty conscience were eternally grateful that telepathy did not exist. Ian had veered off to a bright green food stand with a massive wooden alligator sprawled on its roof, bold red text on a sign claiming it to be a gourmet delicacy.

“You still up for this?” Ian asked, his lip twitching.

Mickey only raised his eyebrows and got in line, ordering a portion of battered and fried gator bites with fries as well as 3 gator satay skewers with a light lime-peanut sauce. Ian got the same, pushing a couple of $20 bills forward to pay for the both of them, stubbornly refusing to take Mickey’s money.

“So are you into art as well?” Ian prompted, waving away Mickey’s money again as the smell of the satays hitting the barbecue engulfed them.

Mickey snorted, rolling up the cash and vowing to reverse-pickpocket Ian later.

“Nah, I can’t tell a Monet from a Van Gogh if you held a gun to my head. Mandy got all the creative artsy genes on her side of the family, my side is reserved for the more rational, level-headed nerds.”

Ian slowly looked Mickey up and down and cocked his head, and Mickey bit the inside of his cheek to keep from saying anything.

“You? A nerd? Did you play The Sims for a week when you were a kid or something?”

Mickey smirked. “First off, no bashing The Sims; playing God and setting your Sims on fire while making pancakes is a first class thrill. Secondly, I do search engine optimization for international companies so I’ve unintentionally filled my days with algorithms, HTML and people who prefer to live in basements.”

“So you’re like a web designer?” Ian guessed, frowning.

“More like a strategic marketing tool in trying to make online searches my bitch. I leave the actual designing to the basement creatures.”

Ian hummed in understanding as their order number was called, and they both busied themselves with foam containers, plastic forks and napkins. Mickey squirted a significant amount of garlic sauce onto his fries and shook his head as Ian did the same on his with the ketchup. After having desecrated their fries to the desired amount, they slowly started walking back towards Mandy, eating as they went.

“So,” Ian started before shoving a fry in his mouth and chewing as Mickey frowned at his crappy timing. Ian swallowed and addressed Mickey again. “What were _you_ doing at the conference?”

The question caught Mickey off-guard even as he realized he should have anticipated it. Considering that he hadn’t had time to discuss the entire situation with his sister, he hesitated, wondering what cover story Mandy had given Ian when they met. The plausible reason for her being at an investment conference was easy; her art-related clients. However, something told him that Mandy didn’t have an in-depth discussion on her favorite ‘cousin’ with Ian yet because otherwise he would have known more about what Mickey did for a living. So assuming that Ian knew next to nothing about him, Mickey went with the easiest option.

“Some client invited Mandy and a plus-one to the networking thing so they could meet and she said there would be an open bar, so I went to get a drink.”

Ian hummed again, shoving more ketchup-soaked fries into his mouth as he faced forward.

“You looked pretty good to have gone just for the open bar,” were the next words casually coming out of his mouth, and Mickey promptly begged the earth to crack open at his feet and for lava to engulf him in his entirety to result in a slow and painful end to his miserable and unworthy existence.

Because the asphalt underneath his feet didn’t budge and he could finally see Mandy’s blonde hair on the bench they left her on, he instead shoved a large piece of fried alligator into his mouth and chewed slowly, waiting for his heart to restart its beating at a somewhat accelerated pace before swallowing.

“Tastes like chicken,” he said loudly to Mandy, and he heard Ian softly chuckle behind him, “but like a gamey sort of wild chicken with rodeo aspirations. How’s the fried ice cream thing?”

“Like sweet, sweet cardiac arrest,” she sighed happily. “It really tastes like chicken? That’s disappointing.”

“That’s the limitation of the human palate,” Mickey mumbled, “everything tastes like fucking chicken.”

”And we’re supposedly the superior species...” Mandy stretched her arms up and then slumped back down. “Which animal has a better palate than us?”

“Catfish,” Ian replied confidently with his mouth full.

“Catfish?” Mandy frowned, “Huh.”

Ian took another bite of the fried alligator, nodding as he chewed. “My little brother had to do a project on it a few weeks ago, and apparently their entire body contains taste buds.”

“One big fishy tongue,” Mickey said in between shoving garlic sauce-soaked fries in his mouth, trying hard to concentrate on fishies instead of tongues. He really needed another beer.

With loud groaning, Mandy got up off the bench, grabbing a piece of fried alligator from Mickey’s container as she passed by, skipping forward quickly before Mickey could kick her for stealing his food.

“So what’s next?” Ian asked once more, his long legs quickly catching up with the siblings as Mickey threw a soggy fry at Mandy instead. She sidestepped the flying potato while protecting the purple unicorn with her body, softly petting it as she walked a few steps ahead of the boys.

“You’re so fluffy, I’m gonna die!” she said as she squished the plushie.

Ian shook his head at her. “Right reference, wrong unicorn,” he commented, “Agnes’ unicorn was white with pink, not purple.”

Mandy stopped dead in her tracks and turned around, gasping in horror and slapping a hand to her heart at Ian’s betrayal. Next to him, Mickey snorted and immediately choked in a fry, coughing to get it back up. Ian smirked at Mandy, stopping to smack Mickey on the back as she pointed two fingers at her eyes and then at Ian’s, squinting her eyes and trying to suppress her smile.

“Fluffy and I do not appreciate your commentary, Ian O’Neill!” she retorted, waiting for Mickey to finish wheezing.

“Fluffy is a three-headed dog guarding the trap door to the philosopher’s stone, woman,” Mickey finally said when he could breathe again, tears shining in his eyes as he laughed, “what’s wrong with your pop culture references today?”

Ian snickered as he squeezed Mickey’s shoulder before following Mandy to the exit, leaving Mickey to wish for properly working lungs, more alcohol, and one-way telepathy.

  

* * *

 

“If I smell one more hot dog stand, I’m turning around.”

Mandy patted Ian on the shoulder as the three of them slowly walked the 2 and a half blocks from the subway to her apartment.

“You’re doing great, sweetie, you’re almost there,” she said, revelling in the cool evening air with her new favorite plushie under her arm.

“Really shouldn’t have had that fried cinnamon roll,” he lamented some more, and Mickey snorted a few steps behind them.

“Nope, that was probably a mistake,” Mandy agreed, “but at least now you’ll know to listen to me when I tell you not to challenge Mickey with anything related to eating.”

“He’s a _monster_ …” Ian stage-whispered to Mandy, and she smirked.

“You haven’t seen anything yet, tough guy,” grinned Mickey, and Mandy looked over her shoulder to find him looking at the hot dog stand across the street as if he was thinking of buying one. He winked at her but a moment later the mischievous expression on his face grew serious as he placed his hand on the outside of his pocket, near to where he kept his phone. He fished his phone out of his pocket and looked at the screen, letting out a deep sigh and waving at Mandy to keep walking as he turned around and strolled towards his own house.

“Jim, the pleasure is all mine,” she heard Mickey answer, and that was the end of it. A mission had come up, and she felt the innate itch to check her own phone to see if there was a missed call from the agency.

“Where’s he going?” said Ian, looking around to see Mickey walk away.

Mandy shrugged. “I guess he was on-call for work. These guys always have emergencies for something or the other.”

“In strategic marketing?” Ian said, frowning.

“Of course,” Mandy bluffed, “when the big brands have a new product coming out or need to salvage something, they tend to give him a call. You don’t want to know how much overtime those IT guys make when there’s new stuff being launched.”

“Never thought of it that way,” Ian mumbled.

 _Neither have I_ , thought Mandy.

They reached her building, squeezing into the tiny elevator to the 5th floor. Mandy placed her thumb on the finger scanner and, in order to give the reader time to work, pretended to sneeze, which turned into a real sneeze, and then another. With her eyes full of tears, she slid her key into the door and opened up, kicking off her shoes after the door closed behind Ian.

“Make yourself at home, there’s beer in the fridge, I’ll be right back,” she said, already walking towards the bathroom with an apologetic smile.

She closed the door behind her, taking her phone out of her pocket and staring at the two missed calls; Private Number and Mickey.

“Fuck,” she whispered, knowing that Mickey would most likely just have sent her a message if his job were a solo mission. She pressed down on Mickey’s name and brought the phone to her ear, turning on the tap and letting the water run.

“Assface,” Mickey said in greeting.

“Fucktwat, what’s going on.”

“You wanna go for a late night dinner tonight, say 1 or 2?”

Mandy groaned; their restaurant code meant that it was an MM job and she was needed.

“God _damnit_.” She looked around for something to throw or break and decided against it considering that she’d be the one cleaning it up. “Is anyone joining us?”

“Just a friend from work,” Mickey replied, and she heard him rummaging through something on the other side, probably already prepping for their 1 am mission with a tech backup.

“What’s the dress code?” she pushed, her brother’s lack of detail annoying her as usual.

“Fancy dress, I’ll send you the details in a bit. Shouldn’t take too long, really.”

“I fucking hope not,” she mumbled as she hung up, already debating whether to let Ian go sooner rather than later.

She roughly shoved her phone back into her pocket, flushing the toilet and splashing her face with cold water before leaning over the sink and taking a moment to breathe, to get her brain and face back to a calmer state of mind. A few deep breaths later, she toweled off and padded to her living room only to find Ian slumped down in her dark blue couch, his eyes closed and head lolling to one side, his chest rising and falling slowly as he slept. Mandy sighed, staring at him for a moment, silently cursing her ridiculously comfortable couch for claiming yet another victim.

Running her hands through her hair, she pulled slightly to create tension just so she could release it, something nagging at her in the back of her brain. Ian was a great guy, intelligent and interesting and sweet and attentive and polite and mature, all the good qualities she’d look for in a man if she were looking. He was a genuinely nice person without a second and third and fourth layer of relative ‘truth’ separating him from her like everyone else in the industry. He took everything slow and at her pace, respecting the boundaries she set and never pushing yet always present. He felt solid and steady, someone you could depend on, loyal and devoted, and family oriented at that. He represented a chance for a normal life that she secretly craved, but she wasn’t used to making long-term decisions like this, choices that could affect both of her lives to an extreme extent, giving him the power to destroy, wholly or partially, what she had worked and suffered for for most of her life. The thought alone made her skin itch.

Yet there was potential there, a kindred soul that she could talk to and laugh with and be _happy_ with, someone that didn’t outright clash with Mickey, which was almost a miracle if she really sat down and thought about it. The beginning of a friendship that could last, first and foremost, with hopefully more attached to that. After the Institute, making genuine friends had been practically impossible considering that their jobs were predominantly secret and their lives mostly a lie. There were times that she missed having Sasha around, just another person to bounce ideas off of other than her brother, his easy laugh the exact opposite of the Milkovich broodiness both she and Mickey generally embodied. Faina had been fun while it lasted after they graduated, but no one new had qualified for that position in a long time. And here was Ian “card-carrying, apple pie-eating, ‘Born on the 4th of July’ American citizen” O’Neill, with his red hair and green eyes and quick smile, ready to apply.

Even though the date had started off rocky, Ian had lasted an entire afternoon around Mickey without her brother trying to slip a roofie into his drink or Ian trying to dominate the situation. There had been some tense moments between them but there was hardly anyone Mickey didn’t have a tense relationship with, so that wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. He also hadn’t commented on either Mickey’s or her superb shooting skills, but then he hadn’t been that bad himself, so that was a plus. All of 4 dates and their late-night phone calls and a spontaneous lunch didn’t make her and Ian a couple, or any type of official relationship for that matter, but she was nevertheless going to take things as slow as possible to see if she could integrate her two lives, avoiding the quick and lusty road she had taken so often in her life.

She felt an odd pull towards the sleeping redhead, a tenderness that she had only experienced twice before, though one of them was now dead and the other lived and operated on the other side of the world in a country she was unofficially but very effectively banned from. And even if she knew that she was using Ian up to a certain extent, taking from him what she wanted without informing him of all she was, there was not a single ounce of remorse in her body at all the future lies she would be telling him. For as long as her brother lived and needed her, she could and would never cut off all ties with her profession, also considering that her gallery was used as the main money-laundering mechanism for their payments. She would also never ask Mickey to give up his lifestyle, to actually live with the outside people in their boring outside lives instead of doing what he loved; blowing up entire warehouses and shooting people from two football fields away.

If she was being honest with herself, the thing she dreaded the most was The Talk she needed to have with Mickey, fearing her brother’s disapproval and mostly his disappointment with her life choices and the consequences they would have for them both, with her selfishness for even proposing to do something that would impact him so fully. Mickey wasn’t generally prone to doing anything rash to protect them if he deemed something a threat to their livelihood as he preferred a slow and steady drug over a fast and messy bullet to the head, but then the threat in question had never been his sister. If she were him, the easiest way to eliminate that particular situation would be to remove Ian from the equation, and Mickey was more than capable enough to achieve that without any suspicions of foul play arising.

Ian snored softly, and Mandy’s thoughts rose up from their dark downward spiral, a genuine smile spreading over her face. She took out her phone and snapped a picture of the snoring man, just for potential blackmail purposes, and went to the fridge for a beer as she mentally encouraged herself to read the email Mickey had just sent her. Leaning against the counter with Ian in full sight, she sipped her drink and reviewed the details of the job, already planning her strategy and outfit. She’d need at least 2 hours to prepare, so she pencilled Ian in for another 10 minutes of napping before she would start pushing him towards the door. Then she’d gather her things and go to Mickey’s place, after which they’d meet up with their tech person and go towards the job.

Putting her phone down on the counter, she walked back to the couch, watching Ian’s chest move with his slow breathing, and at least 8 different ways of killing or permanently injuring him passed before her eyes like they usually did. There was always the slight possibility that Ian would figure things out, would confront her with her profession, would threaten to expose her, and in the worst case scenario, expose Mickey. A shiver ran down her back, and for a moment, she could already feel warm, sticky blood running down her bare hands, a body relaxing in her arms as life forcefully bled out of it, eyes glazing over and a mouth opening in a silent scream.

If it came down to that, she would deal with the situation herself, taking responsibility for the consequences of her selfish actions. Her brother came first, always. She would protect him and clean up her own mess. She owed Mickey that much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With many thanks to my amazing ever-present beta, and all of you for enduring the long wait. <3


End file.
